Endocrine Abstracts

There are many opportunities for those who pursue a career in science. This can include a direct route through academia and ultimately becoming a professor and leading your own research group. However, very few people go all the way through with this and therefore it is important to consider other options. Further career paths could include working in industry, government or in a research support setting amongst others. A career in research support is a rewarding one, often be...

Why do so many people believe what clearly are, at least to us in academia, ‘alterative facts’? Ignorance and stupidity are answers that slip easily of the lips. If they only understood the science…why don’t they look at the evidence? However, it is easy to forget that while we are all experts in our own little patch of intellectual or technical real-estate, we all have ‘faith’ and believe in a multitude of things that we understand little about ...

Why do so many people believe what clearly are, at least to us in academia, ‘alterative facts’? Ignorance and stupidity are answers that slip easily of the lips. If they only understood the science…why don’t they look at the evidence? However, it is easy to forget that while we are all experts in our own little patch of intellectual or technical real-estate, we all have ‘faith’ and believe in a multitude of things that we understand little about ...

It is clear that the cause of obesity is a result of eating more than you burn. What is more complex to answer is why some people eat more than others? Over the past 20 years, insights from human and mouse genetics have illuminated multiple pathways within the brain that play a key role in the control of food intake. We now know that the brain leptin-melanocortin pathway is central to mammalian food intake control, with genetic disruption resulting in extreme obesity. These, h...

An increasing body of evidence demonstrates that growth factor networks are highly interactive with oestrogen receptor (ER) signalling in the pathogenesis of a number of common cancer types, including breast cancer. Thus several growth factor-induced protein kinases are able to target and phosphorylate key regulatory sites within the ER and its co-activating proteins, a process that enables the activity of the ER as a nuclear transcription factor. It is believed that when aber...

Obesity is a leading global health concern. The gut-brain axis is critical to appetite regulation. The vagus nerve represents the major neural pathway between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system, capable of rapidly communicating information about the nutrient content from different regions of the gastrointestinal tract, directly via nutrient receptors expressed on vagal afferents and indirectly by responding to gut hormones and enteric nervous system sign...

The thyrotropin receptor (TSHR) is expressed in the thyroid and in precursors undergoing lineage-specific differentiation, e.g adipogenesis. The TSHR is activated by TSH, thyroid stimulating antibodies (TSAB) and gain-of-function mutations (TSHR*). To investigate the role of extra-thyroidal TSHR activation we compared the gene-expression profiles of non-modified human subcutaneous preadipocytes with the parallel TSHR* population. Twenty-seven genes were significantly upregulat...

Prolactinomas are the commonest type of functioning pituitary adenoma in man. High circulating oestrogen levels are associated with lactotroph proliferation and increased PRL secretion essential for lactation. In vitro, oestradiol induces proliferation of the rat pituitary somatolactotroph GH3 cell line, and chronic oestrogen treatment of Fischer-344 rats in vivo results in lactotroph hyperplasia and adenoma formation, though the mechanisms responsible remain elu...

Background: Obese subjects are usually in a positive energy balance despite their best efforts to lose weight. This study aimed to determine if hunger, nausea and satiety levels differ in lean and obese subjects after consuming varying calorific meals.Method: Following an overnight fast, test meals of 250, 500, 1000, 2000 and 3000 kcal were consumed by 19 lean and 19 obese subjects. Hunger, nausea and satiety levels were measured using visual analogue sc...

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are widely prescribed to treat a number of inflammatory and autoimmune conditions. However, patients receiving GCs often develop adverse metabolic effects such as hyperphagia leading to weight gain and hyperglycaemia. Little is known about the central effects of GCs; however they can act in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus (ARC), a region involved in the integration of other energy regulatory hormones such as leptin, insulin and ghrelin. Therefore, the ai...