Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Alterations in foetal growth lead to neonatal health risks and favour metabolic diseases during adult life. Therefore, the study of birth weight determination and its modifications is crucial for metabolic diseases prevention. Placental growth is a key factor in foetal growth. It has been suggested that insulin and the IGF system play an important role in foetal growth and placental development and function. Although, insulin and IGFs in the umbilical cord blood ...

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...

Background: Birth weight is a marker and predictor of metabolic diseases in adult life. Fetal growth depends on the availability of nutrients, in turn cross the placental barrier by means of special cells called syncytiotrophoblasts, which express specific transporters for each type of nutrient. Glucose, the main energetic substrate for fetal development, is transported via facilitated diffusion, through glucose transporter proteins (GLUTs). Several investigations have focused...

Introduction: Ghrelin is an orexigenic hormone with two isoforms: Acyl Ghrelin (AG) and Desacyl Ghrelin (DAG). AG binds to its specific receptor GHS-R1 and stimulates growth hormone secretion. DAG also binds to GHS-R1 receptor, but with 1000 times less affinity than AG. Effect of DAG on cell proliferation and inhibition of apoptosis has been reported. However, there are no studies of DAG function in human placenta. For first time, this work analyzed the effect of DAG on viabil...