Endocrine Abstracts

The cardiovascular symptoms and signs of overt thyrotoxicosis are well known. These symptoms and signs may persist even after successful restoration of euthyroidism. Long-term, overt hyperthyroidism is associated with increased vascular mortality, from both cardiovascular and cerebrovascular causes, even in patients treated in the last 20 years. This mortality may particularly reflect an effect of thyroid hormone excess on cardiac rhythm, especially risk of atrial fibrillation...

The cardiovascular system is one of the major targets of thyroid hormone action, sensitive enough to detect the effects of thyroid hormone excess or deficiency at tissue level. Triiodothyronine (T3) acts on the heart and vascular system by classic genomic as well as non-genomic mechanisms and influences heart rate, systolic and diastolic function and systemic vascular resistance thereby affecting cardiac performance. In human short-term overt hyperthyroidism, the increase in l...

Thyroid hormone controls multiple physiological processes in both development and adult homeostasis. The majority of thyroid hormone actions that are understood at the molecular level involve transcriptional regulation of target genes mediated by hormone binding to the nuclear thyroid hormone receptors. However, a large number of thyroid hormone actions occur on a rapid time scale through unknown mechanisms that do not involve gene transcription. We have recently identified a ...

Thyroid hormone receptors are ligand dependant transcription factors. They mediate a genomic response initiated by the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine, T3.In mice and humans two isotypes, TRα and TRβ, are produced from two different genes, and several isoforms of each isotype are present in the tissues. The knock out of either TRα or TRβ genes induces different phenotypes and several studies led to the conclusion that the TRα re...