Understanding concurrent endocrine and dermatology conditions

What should veterinary professionals understand about concurrent endocrine and dermatologic diseases? Christina Gentry, DVM, DACVM, assistant clinical professor at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biological Sciences; and Patty Lathan, VMD, MS, DACVIM (SAIM), are presenting a lecture on “Navigating Concurrent Endocrine and Dermatological Disease” at the 2026 Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX), hosted by the North American Veterinary Community, in Orlando, Florida, to address the topic. In a dvm360 interview, Gentry outlined some lecture insights and what VMX attendees can expect to hear from the speakers and takeaway from the lecture on .

The following is transcript of the interview portion shown in the video:

dvm360: What can [lecture] attendees learn about concurrent endocrine and dermatological disease?

Christina Gentry, DVM, DACVM: “We're going to talk about patients that have endocrine disease but also have skin and manifestations of that. So our main focus is going to be hypothyroidism and hypercortisolism, also known as Cushing [disease], because those patients may present to, either, the internist for systemic signs, PU/PD [polyuria and polydipsia], lethargy, weight gain, pot belly appearance—depending on which endocrine disease it is—vs those same animals [that] could actually present to a dermatologist for the skin changes.

For hypothyroidism, for example, we get patients for noninflamed wear and tear alopecia—just the hair is not growing back. And then with further questioning, yes, he is lethargic, yes, they've maybe gained weight. And then for hypercortisolism, we often see patients present that maybe aren't as obvious with their PU/PD, and so they don't go to internal medicine. First, they come to us for truncal hair loss, maybe thinner belly skin scaling and secondary bacterial infections. And they often think that the dog is suffering from allergies because there is recurrent infection and the infection is itchy, but when the infection goes away, they're not itchy, which is more consistent with endocrine disease. So we're going to talk about depending on who you go to first [and] how we work them up. Then, we're also going to talk a little bit about—I think that's the most important thing for this talk, because I think it's the most complicate—is ‘what do you do if you have a dog that has secondary infection or secondary mycosis, but you need to test them for endocrine diseases? What test can you still run in light of having these other inflammatory diseases, and how do you kind of circumvent some of those issues?

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