Endocrine Abstracts

The predominant positive and negative regulators of skeletal muscle mass are IGF1 and myostatin respectively. The regulation of skeletal muscle mass, IGF1 and myostatin by the gonadal steroids testosterone and 17β-oestradiol (E2) remains controversial. Male and female C57BL/6 mice underwent bilateral gonadectomy or sham surgery at 4 weeks of age, with insertion of s.c. silastic implants containing testosterone, E2, or cholesterol (placebo) (n</em...

Human sulfation depends on provision of the universal sulfate donor PAPS by the two PAPS synthase isoforms PAPSS1 and PAPSS2. Mutations in PAPSS2 have been identified as a monogenic cause of androgen excess presenting with premature adrenarche and polycystic ovary syndrome, due to decreased sulfation of the androgen precursor DHEA by DHEA sulfotransferase (SULT2A1) and hence increased conversion of DHEA to active androgens (New Eng J Med 2009 360 (22)...

Membrane proteins of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) are involved in a wide array of essential cellular functions. Identification of the topology of membrane proteins can provide important insight into their mechanisms of action and biological roles. This is particularly important for membrane enzymes, since their topology determines the subcellular site where a biochemical reaction takes place and the dependence on luminal or cytosolic substrates and co-factor pools. The metho...

Introduction: Sex steroid hormones exert a wide range of effects on metabolism. New techniques such as metabolomic profiling allow for a deeper insight into metabolic regulation. In epidemiological samples it has been demonstrated that most of these metabolites show sex-specific differences. However, if these differences are attributable to the effects of sex hormones or genetics is little understood so far.Methods: We performed targeted metabolomics pro...

Aim: To compare final height and late metabolic outcomes depending on oestrogen replacement initiation in Turner syndrome (TS).Subjects: Women with TS ≥18 years retrospectively treated with GH and oestrogen.Methods: Records of 117 women with TS from database of Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences were analysed. 71 did not matched the inclusion criteria; 46 patients were enrolled and divided into two groups: e...

Recently, liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) was stated to be the method of choice to measure sex steroids.1 Information on the mutual agreement of LC–MS/MS methods, however, is scarce. Therefore, we compared seven published LC–MS/MS methods for the simultaneous measurement of testosterone, androstenedione, and DHEA. Fifty-five random serum samples obtained from volunteers were analysed in duplicate by seven published LC&#1...

A number of evidence indicate that mood (affective) disorders are influenced by various bioactive steroids such as corticoids, sex hormones and neuroactive steroids. However, to date, there are limited data concerning the discrimination between patients suffering from the disorders and controls, or regarding the classification of individual subtypes of mood disorders on the basis of steroid profiling. Therefore 47 steroids including their conjugates and further related substan...

Steroid testing has a central role in clinical decision-making and in research studies on diseases such as hypercortisolisms, female hyperandrogenism, male hypogonadism or inborn disorders of steroid synthesis. Recently, liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) proved its superiority to routine immunoassays (IA) in accurately and sensitively measuring low level steroids. However, the replacement of automated IA with LC–MS/MS platforms is limited...

Introduction: Aldosterone (Aldo) decreases the rate of repolarization in rabbit cardiomyocytes and significantly increases the duration of the monophasic action potential in patients with supraventricular arrhythmias, few minutes after its intravenous administration, implying for a non-genomic action. We have previously found a positive linear regression between left ventricular systole duration and plasma Aldo levels in NZW rabbits. To investigate the veracity of the above fi...

Introduction: Intrauterine growth is a biological process regulated by maternal, placental, and foetal endocrine signals. Birth weight is an indicator of the health of the newborn. Alterations in foetal growth lead to perinatal health risks and favour metabolic diseases during adult life. Therefore, the study of endocrine factors determining birth weight, such as ghrelin is an important issue. Ghrelin may exist as two molecular forms, desacyl ghrelin (DAG) and acyl ghrelin (AG...