Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Central nervous insulin is critically involved in the regulation of body weight and memory processing. Long-term administration of intranasal insulin reduces body weight in men but not in women while improving hippocampus-dependent memory processing in both genders. Here, acute effects of intranasal insulin on food intake and memory functions were studied in men and women.Methods: Thirty-two healthy, normal-weight subjects (14 men, 18 women) ...

Systemic insulin is considered to serve as a major negative feedback signal in the central nervous regulation of food intake. Accordingly, euglycemic infusion of regular human insulin (RI) has been shown to reduce hunger in a dose dependent fashion. Due to its increased lipophility, the long-acting insulin analogue insulin detemir (DI) might cross the blood–brain barrier faster and in higher quantities than RI and exceed stronger anorexigenic effects. To test this hypothe...

Background: Secretory activity of the hypothalamo-pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis typically increases during the second half of nocturnal sleep. Assuming that this rise in ACTH and cortisol levels occurs in response to the negative energy balance induced by nocturnal fasting and concomitant increases in cerebral glucose consumption during REM sleep, we examined the effects of glucose infusion on nocturnal HPA axis activity during wake and sleep periods.<p class="abstext"...

Introduction: In elderly humans sleep disturbances are associated with an impaired nocturnal inhibition of the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and chronic diseases like metabolic syndrome and depression. Recent experiments in young and healthy subjects demonstrated that intranasal ANP inhibited stimulated cortisol secretion during wakefulness whereas administration of intranasal insulin in the evening reduced cortisol levels in the morning after undisturbed ...