Endocrine Abstracts

The pituitary progenitors are responsible for generating a fully functional endocrine organ during embryonic development. They also preserve potency, to maintain the homoeostasis in the adult pituitary, being able to respond to endocrine challenges, such as pregnancy or obesity. But the main players of this complex process remain elusive. Eph-Ephrins have been implicated in an increasing number of physiological functions such as axon-guidance, eye field segregation from neural...

Efnb2 encodes for the ligand Ephrinb2 that binds to its cognate Eph receptor, with which plays an integral role in angiogenesis, stem cell regulation and tumorigenesis. Using a pituitary-specific Cre-driver (Hesx1Cre), we conditionally deleted Efnb2 from the early stem/progenitor cells (PSCs) of the developing pituitary gland. We found that Efnb2 is expressed in PSCs both during embryogenesis and adulthood, suggesting its...

Adamantinomatous craniopharyngiomas (ACPs) are among the most common intracranial tumours in children and they originate from undifferentiated pituitary progenitors. Mutations in the gene encoding for β-catenin (CTNNB1), which lead to the constitutive activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway, have been associated with ACP. These tumours can invade adjacent structures, such as the hypothalamus, which makes comp...

Adamantinomatous craniopharyngiomas (ACPs) are among the most common intracranial tumours in children and they originate from undifferentiated pituitary progenitors. Mutations in the gene encoding for β-catenin (CTNNB1), which lead to the constitutive activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway, have been associated with ACP. These tumours can invade adjacent structures, such as the hypothalamus, which makes comp...

Introduction: Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is highly prevalent even in young people. Vitamin D status has been linked to the BMI and insulin resistance.Aim: Determine 25(OH)D concentrations in adolescents before and after nutritional intervention program (NIP) and its relationship to BMI and metabolic syndrome (MS).Methods: We selected 256 secondary school students (127 males) aged between 12 and 16 years from Granada (Sp...