Endocrine Abstracts

Coordinated interaction between the immune and neuroendocrine systems is of key importance in regulating the host's response to inflammation and anoxic stress. Adenosine, released under such conditions in high concentration, modulates a number of inflammatory processes and can regulate the activity of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Although adenosine receptors (ARs) have been described in the pituitary gland, the distribution of the receptor subtypes (A1, A2A, A...

Our previous studies of the gene responsible for the expression of pituitary GH (GH1 gene) have identified 13 novel missense mutations in 52 children with short stature and 154 controls, which occurred more frequently in patients than controls. These mutations result in expression of variant forms of GH with a single amino acid alteration that could lead to conformational changes within the protein, possibly resulting in cleavage sites hidden in wild-type GH becoming ex...

Folliculostellate (FS) cells form a three-dimensional network within the anterior pituitary gland and play a key role in regulating the endocrine response to inflammation and anoxic stress. Adenosine, released under such conditions in high concentration, modulates a number of inflammatory processes and can regulate the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The identities of the adenosine receptor (AR) subtypes mediating these responses, however, and the si...

A child with short stature having height greater than 2 standard deviations below the mean for age and bone age delay of two years but with normal growth hormone secretion tests was identified. Since there was no known clinical cause of the short stature, it was decided to sequence both alleles of the patient's GH1 gene that encodes pituitary GH to determine whether there was a genetic defect responsible for the observed phenotype (with local ethical approval). A 3.2kb fragmen...

The pituitary-expressed growth hormone 1 gene was screened for mutation in a group of 74 Spanish children with familial short stature resulting in the identification of a novel Ile179Met missense mutation. Variant and wild-type GH were expressed in insect cells and functional studies were performed. The Ile179Met variant was shown to exhibit a similar degree of resistance to proteolysis as wild-type GH, indicating that the introduction of Met does not cause significant ...

Introduction: BC patients have a high prevalence of anti-TPO-autoantibodies (TPOAb), which seem to be protective in BC patients. We hypothesized the presence of T-lymphocytes citotoxicity against a common antigen between thyroid and BC cells.Aim: To evaluate the possible expression of TPO gene in BC.Materials: Frozen tissue specimens: 8 BC, 5 peri-tumoral breast tissues (PT), 3 pancreatic adenocarcinoma (P), 2 kidney cancers (K) an...