Definition of "mineralocorticoid" []

• Any of a group of steroid hormones, such as aldosterone, that are secreted by the adrenal cortex and regulate the balance of water and electrolytes in the body. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Aldosterone is also unusual, for a mineralocorticoid, in possessing an oxygen at carbon-n."
• "In 1953, more than a decade after the discovery of four important glycocorticoids and two important mineralocorticoids, there came the rather surprising isolation of another mineralocorticoid."
• "Why this should be we cannot yet tell, but this point of putting the oxygen on, then neutralizing it, results in a mineralocorticoid that is much more powerful than any of those in which the oxygen is absent in the first place."