Endocrine Abstracts

The dampening of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis responses to a repeated stress is termed HPA habituation. We investigated here the effects of two commonly used repeated restraint stress paradigms, in which rats are exposed either to 10 episodes of 0.5 h restraint or 5 episodes of 3 h restraint. We compared ACTH, corticosterone, and testosterone responses, as well as corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) mRNA levels within bra...

Although it is becoming increasingly clear that testosterone exerts an inhibitory influence on stress-induced adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) and corticosterone release, where and how this occurs in the brain remains poorly understood. We previously determined that androgen receptors are not distributed within anterior pituitary communicating neurons of the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus (Bingham et al. J Comp Neurol 2006). However, they are contained with...