Endocrine Abstracts

The pharmacological blockade of cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1) has been shown to counteract diet induced obesity (DIO). An unsolved question is whether the effects of CB1 blockade on energy balance are due to peripheral or central mechanisms. This is an important clinical issue since the CB1 antagonist drugs have recently been withdrawn from the market due to their psychiatric side effects, and novel drugs selectively acting at peripheral le...

Pseudohypoparathyroidism (PHP) refers to a heterogeneous group of rare metabolic disorders characterized by hypocalcemia and hyperphosphatemia due to PTH resistance. Heterozygous loss of function mutations in the gene encoding the alpha-subunit of Gs (GNAS) inherited from the mother lead to PHP type Ia. PHP type Ia (PHP-Ia) is a disease in which the physical features (short stature, obesity, round face, brachydactyly and subcutaneous ossifications) that constitute Albri...

Context and objective: Active Cushing’s disease is associated with cognitive impairments. We hypothesized that previous hypercortisolism in patients with Cushing’s disease results in irreversible impairments in cognitive functioning. Therefore, our aim was to assess cognitive functioning after long-term cure of Cushing’s disease.Design: Cognitive assessment consisted of 11 tests, which evaluated global cognitive functioning, memory, and ex...

Missense loss-of-function mutations in TAC3 and TACR3, the genes encoding neurokinin B (NKB) and its receptor NK3R, respectively, were recently discovered in kindreds with non syndromic normosmic congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (nCHH), thus identifying a fundamental role of this pathway in the human gonadotrope axis.We investigated the consequences on gonadotrope axis of TAC3 and TACR3 invalidations in adult patients ...

Fasting induces profound metabolic changes in order to decrease energy expenditure and to conserve energy. One of the major adaptations is downregulation of the hypothalamus–pituitary–thyroid (HPT) axis, characterized by decreased serum thyroid hormone levels without an increase in serum TSH or in TRH expression in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN). Leptin has been proposed as a critical signal initiating the neuroendocrine response to fasting as it decr...