Endocrine Abstracts

Exposure to soy isoflavones (ISO), abundant in soy protein infant formula, during early postnatal life has benefits to bone health in female mice. Moreover, exposure during the first 10 or 21 days of life has been shown to interfere with structural development of female reproductive organs and results in heavier body weight. The study objective was to compare if shorter exposure to ISO, during the first 5 vs 10 days of life, results in lesser adverse effects on ovarian and ute...

Orexin-A (OR-A) and orexin-B (OR-B) play an important role in the regulation of energy balance and the control of sleep-wake cycle. They act via G-protein coupled receptors, namely orexin receptor-1 (OX1R) and orexin receptor-2 (OX2R). OX2R has equal affinity for both OR-A and OR-B, whilst OX1R has a 10-fold greater affinity for OR-A. Orexin-mediated functions have been extensively explored, however, the intracellular signalling pathways remain poorly understood. Using HEK-293...

The adrenal gland is implicated in energy homeostasis, and dysfunction of this gland contributes to a variety of metabolic disorders including the development of hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, and obesity. Recently, adipokines have been implicated in adrenal function. Adiponectin, an adipokine, with insulin sensitising and anti-inflammatory properties, exerts its effects by activating two distinct seven transmembrane domain receptors, adiponectin-R1 (adipoR1) and -R2 (a...

Adiponectin has been shown to modulate angiogenesis and tumour cell behaviour. Breast and endometrial cancer patients have significantly decreased serum adiponectin levels, which may be important in such hormone-dependent cancers. Prostate cancer is another hormone-dependent cancer. Adiponectin orchestrates its actions by activating two seven-transmembrane receptors, adiponectin-R1 (adipo-R1) and adiponectin-R2 (adipo-R2). In this study we aim to determine adipo-R1/R2 expressi...

Besides playing a role in energy homeostasis, orexins have been reported to have divergent effects on physiological behaviour, cardiovascular regulation, glucocorticoid release, as well as playing a key role in the aetiopathogenesis of narcolepsy. Recent studies using rodent models suggest orexins may also be involved in the regulation of thermogenesis. For example, mice lacking the prepro-orexin gene are significantly hypophagic but have normal body weight suggesting differen...

Orexins (A & B) are derived from a common 130 amino acid precursor peptide, prepro-orexin, by proteolytic cleavage, and orchestrate their actions by binding and activating two types of G-protein coupled receptors, orexin-1 receptor (OX1R) and orexin-2 receptor (OX2R). The OX1R preferentially binds orexin-A, whilst OX2R binds both orexin-A and ?B, with similar affinity. Besides playing a role in the regulation of feeding and energy homeostasis, orexins appear to increase se...

Obesity is linked to the development of insulin resistance, diabetes and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and the metabolic syndrome. Adipose tissue-derived proteins so termed ‘adipokines’ have been implicated in cardiovascular disease and the metabolic syndrome although the molecular mechanisms are not fully understood. Adiponectin, unlike other adipokines, has been shown to have anti-inflammatory, anti-atherogenic, and insulin-sensitising effects. Import...

Background: Clinical manifestations of hyperthyroidism resemble those of hyperadrenergic state. Previous studies of linear analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) revealed cardiac autonomic dysfunctions in hyperthyroidism. In recent years, increasing attention is being directed to the nonlinear analysis of HRV to gain insight into neural modulation of heart rate dynamics. Based on the chaos and fractal theory, an attractor in phase space can characterize the dynamics of a cha...

Background: The 5-year survival rate for patients with unresectable, metastatic pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs) remains less than 30%, emphasizing the need for new and effective treatment options for patients with advanced pNETs. Notch1 signaling is a critical cell-cell communication pathway responsible for regulating differentiation, cell fate determination, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Notch1 plays a critical role in the differentiation state of NE c...

Introduction: Abdominal obesity and insulin resistance are risk factors for erectile dysfunction (ED). ED is associated with hypoandrogenism, endothelial dysfunction, lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), and reduced quality of life (QoL). We aimed to compare effects of lifestyle modification-induced weight loss on insulin resistance, endothelial and sexual function, LUTS and QoL in obese non-diabetic men with and without ED.Methods: Seventy abdominally o...