Endocrine Abstracts

In previous work we demonstrated that various adipokines, including leptin and resistin, were expressed in the hypothalamus and anterior pituitary gland. We hypothesized that a practical approach to investigate the putative central role of such factors would be to selectively silence gene expression by RNA interference (RNAi). We tested this hypothesis using model in vitro systems : C6 glioblastoma cells , which we reported express leptin, and 3T3-L1 adipocytes which are known...

Obesity and adipokines are associated with a state of chronic low grade inflammation (Trayhurn & Wood 2004).In view of our findings that the adipokines resistin and fiaf (fasting-induced adipose factor) are also expressed in mouse brain and pituitary gland (Wiesner et al 2004), we tested the hypothesis that these factors would be induced in brain tissue following cerebral hypoxia/ischemia (H/I). Neonatal H/I (postnatal day 8; unilateral common c...

Adipokines such as resistin and FIAF (fasting-induced adipose factor) are predominantly, but not exclusively, expressed in adipose tissue and may modulate insulin sensitivity and lipid metabolism. We reported that resistin and fiaf mRNA, and resistin protein, are detectable in the mouse hypothalamus and pituitary gland (see eg. Wiesner et al. 2004). We are investigating the regulation of these genes in a novel hypothalamic neuronal cell line (n-1; Belsham ...

Resistin is a newly-described hormone whose expression in adipose tissue is regulated by fasting, insulin and obesity. We recently reported that resistin mRNA is also expressed in mouse hypothalamus and pituitary (FEBS Letts. 526, p26 (2002)). In the present study we hypothesized that adiposity would influence hypothalamic resistin immunoreactivity (ir). Two different, polyclonal antisera ( raised against aa 51-108, human ; aa 83-91, mouse ) revealed resistin ir in coronal sec...

We reported that leptin mRNA is developmentally regulated and hypothesized that local leptin expression is important for the maturation of the hypothalamic-pituitary system. Pituitary leptin mRNA levels were down-regulated in early postnatal male and female rats. We now show that pituitary leptin protein content and expression of the long (OBRb) and short (OBRa) leptin receptor isoforms in the pituitary and hypothalamus also undergo age-related changes. Tissue wa...