Endocrine Abstracts

Estrogens regulate bone growth and bone mass mainly via estrogen receptor-α (ERα). In addition, the anabolic effect of mechanical loading on cortical bone requires ERα. This lecture summarizes some recent findings characterizing the primary target cells and the crucial ERα domains for the mediation of these estrogenic effects on the skeleton.Mice with complete inactivation of ERα continue to grow throughout life associated with i...

Patients with the syndrome Resistance to Thyroid Hormone (RTH) exhibit purturbances in regulation of serum thyroxine and often suffer from hypermetabolism, tachycardia, hyperactivity and mental retardation. Most of these patients express a mutant thyroid hormone receptor beta (TRb) unable to bind ligand, resulting in transdominant negative effects in transcription. As no patient with a mutant TRa has been identified, we introduced into the mouse TRa1 gene a point mutation foun...