Neural mediation of compensatory adrenal growth.

Spinal cord hemisection between T2 and T3 inhibits compensatory adrenal growth when the contralateral but not the ipsilateral adrenal is removed (p less than 0.01). Pretreatment of left adrenals with 1 or 2% lidocaine, but not with saline, before removal inhibits compensatory right adrenal growth that is normally observed at 12 h (p less than 0.01). These results provide further functional evidence that both afferent and efferent neural elements mediate adrenal growth after unilateral adrenalectomy.