Multiple endocrine adenopathy.

Since the original descriptions of the MEA syndrome, wide interest has been evinced for these familial endocrine disorders. Initially, screening investigations with the advent of the automated blood chemical analyses, and thus, the enhanced ease of detection of serum calcium levels have been followed by a flurry of diagnostic and therapeutic advances. Formal recognition of three MEA types, with their characteristics, has occurred over the last 20 years. Certainly in the future, other variants will be recognized and pose new problems. MEA poses fundamental questions of the embryologic origin and derivation of endocrine glands as well as issues of chromosomal operations of specific gene loci which have not yet been fully investigated.