Endocrine Abstracts

During early life, the majority of cardiomyocytes exit the cell cycle and undergo terminal differentiation, becoming binucleated. This establishes the number of cardiomyocytes for the remainder of the lifetime, with subsequent consequences for cardiac resilience in adulthood. Activation of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) is important for heart maturation: fetal mice lacking GR in cardiomyocytes (SMGRKO) show structural and functional cardiac immaturity. Young adult male and f...

Introduction: The repercussions of long-term exposure to low level mixtures of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) which are present, ubiquitously, in the environment are not well understood. Heat-treated sewage sludge, an EDC-rich product used as fertiliser, has been shown to compromise testicular and ovarian development. However, to date, there has been limited investigation in exposed animals of the adrenal glands, the steroid hormone products of which play key roles in f...

The late gestation increase in glucocorticoid action promotes the structural and functional maturation of the fetal heart. Metabolic maturation of cardiomyocytes involves a switch from glucose utilization as a fuel source to fatty acid (FA) oxidation. In fetal cardiomyocytes, glucocorticoids induce expression of PGC1a (a master regulator of mitochondrial capacity), lipin1 and KLF15 (genes involved in FA oxidation). We hypothesized that glucocorticoids promote the metabolic swi...