Endocrine Abstracts

Context: Osmotic stimulus or stress results in release of vasopressin. Animal studies have shown that inflammatory parameters such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) increase in parallel, mainly in central brain regions. Whether osmotic stimulation leads to an inflammatory response in humans is unknown. We therefore investigated the influence of osmotic stimulation on the inflammatory system in healthy volunteers.Method: In this prospective...

Background: Copeptin is the C-terminal portion of the precursor of vasopressin. In contrast to vasopressin copeptin is stable in vitro and easy to measure. Similar kinetics of both peptides have been described in different trials. However, the physiological area of normality of copeptin has never been evaluated.Methods: We measured plasma copeptin, sodium, and osmolality levels in 93 healthy volunteers at baseline, during/after i.v. infusion of ...