Fig. 3.

Incremental a ACTH, b total cortisol and c free cortisol responses to CRH and placebo in 3 patient cohorts. The AUC hormone responses to placebo were subtracted from the AUC hormone responses to CRH and indicate the incremental hormone responses. Data are shown as mean ± SEM on a logarithmic scale. ICU denotes intensive care unit. The horizontal blue-shaded areas represent the mean ± SEM incremental hormone responses from the 20 healthy subjects. *P ≤ 0.05, **P ≤ 0.01, and ***P ≤ 0.0001 for the comparisons with healthy subjects. The numerical P values are those for the comparisons between patient cohorts