Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Central nervous insulin is critically involved in the regulation of body weight and memory processing. Long-term administration of intranasal insulin reduces body weight in men but not in women while improving hippocampus-dependent memory processing in both genders. Here, acute effects of intranasal insulin on food intake and memory functions were studied in men and women.Methods: Thirty-two healthy, normal-weight subjects (14 men, 18 women) ...

Systemic insulin is considered to serve as a major negative feedback signal in the central nervous regulation of food intake. Accordingly, euglycemic infusion of regular human insulin (RI) has been shown to reduce hunger in a dose dependent fashion. Due to its increased lipophility, the long-acting insulin analogue insulin detemir (DI) might cross the blood–brain barrier faster and in higher quantities than RI and exceed stronger anorexigenic effects. To test this hypothe...

Background: Secretory activity of the hypothalamo-pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis typically increases during the second half of nocturnal sleep. Assuming that this rise in ACTH and cortisol levels occurs in response to the negative energy balance induced by nocturnal fasting and concomitant increases in cerebral glucose consumption during REM sleep, we examined the effects of glucose infusion on nocturnal HPA axis activity during wake and sleep periods.<p class="abstext"...

Introduction: The activity of the somatotropic system displays a secretory maximum during early sleep which is also a period known to be important for memory consolidation. Blocking of the sleep-onset associated GH-surge by somatostatin did not affect memory performance but the contribution of growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) to memory processes is unclear. Here we assessed the influence of intranasal GHRH on memory function in waking subjects during the early part of t...

Introduction: In elderly humans sleep disturbances are associated with an impaired nocturnal inhibition of the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and chronic diseases like metabolic syndrome and depression. Recent experiments in young and healthy subjects demonstrated that intranasal ANP inhibited stimulated cortisol secretion during wakefulness whereas administration of intranasal insulin in the evening reduced cortisol levels in the morning after undisturbed ...

Background: Sleep loss is increasingly common in the western world and has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of diabetes mellitus and obesity.Objective: We hypothesised that short term sleep loss results in a diabetogenic metabolic status during carbohydrate challenge at a breakfast buffet.Subjects and methods: Fifteen healthy, normal-weight young men were studied in randomized balanced order on the subsequent morn...

Objective: Hypokalemic Conn’s syndrome is a rare disease with a prevalence of 0.5% in unselected hypertensive populations. However, recent studies indicate a higher prevalence of a milder variant of Conn’s syndrome, reaching 10% in some studies. Long term outcome and health care costs of hypo- and normokalemic variants are largely unknown. The National Conn’s Registry is an initiative to create a national database of sufficient epidemiological strength to invest...

Vascular calcification, occurring in organs such as heart and kidneys, is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular mortality. The underlying molecular mechanisms remain unknown. To elucidate these, we investigated C3H mice, an inbred strain susceptible to vascular, myocardial and renal calcification. Myocardial calcification in C3H mice involves 4 genetic loci, Dyscalc1-4, that map to chromosomes 7, 4, 12 and 14, respectively. Dyscalc1 contributes to myoc...

Follistatin is a hepatokine found to be elevated in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and promotes hyperglycemia in mice. We report that elevated baseline circulating follistatin levels predict future T2D incidence in longitudinal cohorts including up to 5274 individuals. Individuals with elevated circulating follistatin had higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes during follow-up of 4 years (IMI-DIRECT-METSIM, n = 1079, Finland), 5 and 19 years (MDC-CC, n...