Endocrine Abstracts

Sex hormones act both as endocrine signals as well as local paracrine or autocrine factors in the nervous system. In addition to target to classical endocrine and reproductive brain areas, sex hormones and its metabolites affect learning and cognition and regulate the development and plasticity of brain regions that are not directly related to reproduction. Estrogen and progesterone exert neuroprotective effects in the central nervous system and may affect the onset and progre...

Endogenous as well as exogenous androgens and oestrogen have neuroprotective properties. Oestrogen is formed locally in neural tissue from precursor androgens. In the brain, the expression of aromatase, the enzyme that catalyses the conversion of androgens to oestrogen, is restricted, under normal circumstances, to specific neuronal populations involved in neuroendocrine control and in the modulation of reproductive or sexually dimorphic behaviours. However, the expression of ...