ABSTRACT

The most well-known causes of cell and tissue injury are hypoxia, chemical and physical factors, biologic (eg, infectious, immunologic) agents, and genetic determinants. Among these etiologic agents, chemicals represent the most com­ mon agents aifecting endocrine glands; in decreasing frequency these include the adrenals, testis, ovary, and other glands (22). This may be the reason that sys­ tematic structure-activity studies have been performed only with adrenocorticolytic chemicals (25,28,31). Our purpose here is to review the patterns of cell and tissue injury in the endocrine glands starting with etiology and progressing through pathogenesis and structural (ie, morphologic) and functional (eg, patho­ physiologic) changes.