Getting risks right on inhaled corticosteroids and adrenal insufficiency.

As Thomas Addison observed in his famous monograph written in 1855, the adrenal glands are ‘‘objects of deep interest’’ and so they remain [1]. In the monograph he described several patients who presented with generalised weakness and in whom abnormalities of the adrenal glands were found at post mortem. Addison had discovered primary hypoadrenalism, the disease that would later take his name. He observed that ‘‘the disease is by no means of very rare occurrence, and that were we better acquainted with its symptoms and progress, we should probably succeed in detecting many cases’’ [1].