Endocrine Abstracts

Corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH), and the urocortins (UCN) play key roles in mammalian pathophysiology. Their actions are mediated through two types of G-protein coupled CRH receptors, (R1 and R2) which exhibit distinct pharmacological characteristics and determine specificity of CRH and UCN actions. Several CRH-R1 mRNA splice variants have been identified in native tissues, encoding receptor isoforms with various aminoacid inserts or deletions, termed R1β, R1c, R1d ...

The formation of the placental syncytiotrophoblast through trophoblast differentiation is a key cellular event, essential for successful embryonic implantation, oxygen/nutrient transport and secretion of placental hormones necessary for fetal development. Trophoblast differentiation alters expression of various molecules with important roles in placental biology, including 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 (11β-HSD2), the major component of the placental glucoc...

Orexins, in addition to regulating food intake and playing a role in the sleep wake cycle, are involved in the activation of HPA axis. Starvation induces metabolic changes in the body, including upregulation of orexin and its receptors in the hypothalamus. We investigated the expression and signalling characteristics of rat orexin receptors at the hypothalamic and adrenal level in food deprived animals and controls. Food deprivation induced both orexin type-1 (OX1R) and type-2...

Objective: To investigate whether genetic variants in the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and corticotropin releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRHR1) genes are associated with increased susceptibility for postnatal depression (PND).Methods: A prospective longitudinal cohort study at University Hospital, Coventry, England. Two hundred pregnant women were recruited and assessed for PND using the Edinburgh postnatal depression score (EPDS) upon recruitment and agai...