Endocrine Abstracts

Context: Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin which requires the hydroxylation into 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25-(OH)2D3) to be fully active. Vitamin D deficiency is a worldwide health problem associated to a wide range of acute and chronic diseases. On other hand, vitamin D supplementation has been proposed to reduced the risk of metabolic dysfunctions including obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Vitamin D interacts with the epigenetic m...

Context: Metabolic diseases affect millions of people in both developed and transition countries. In addition to genetic inheritance of risk alleles, emerging evidence has shown that these diseases are also linked to lifestyle and inherited epigenetic pattern interactions. The strong link between epigenetics and metabolism may offer attractive clinical applications to counteract and manage the escalating prevalence of metabolic diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellit...

Context: Obesity is a global epidemic and an independent risk factor for several metabolic disorders. Emerging evidence suggests a role for epigenetic factors, such as microRNAs (miRNAs), in the development of obesity. MiRNAs are small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression. Moreover, circulating miRNAs are potential noninvasive biomarkers because they are stable in body fluids and can be detected using validated techniques, such as quantitative PCR. However, the identi...