Endocrine Abstracts

Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is essential for primate reproduction, acting via the FSH-receptor (FSHR) which is expressed in Sertoli and granulosa cells only. Despite its highly specific expression pattern, knowledge of the FSHR promoter and transcriptional regulation is still very limited. To gain insights into the regulatory elements controlling FSHR expression we characterized the core promoter activity of all important primate lineages including human. We isolated DN...

2005 marks the 100th anniversary of the creation of the term hormone by Ernest Starling. Although its biological effects were known since antiquity, the name testosterone (T) was coined only in 1935, when Ernest Laqueur isolated it from bull testes. The road to this isolation was long: John Hunter had transplanted testes into capons in 1786 and Adolph Berthold postulated internal secretion from his testicular transplantation experiments in 1849. Following his obs...

E Nieschlag, Institute of Reproductive Medicine of the University, Muenster, Germany AbstractEberhard Nieschlag studied medicine at the Universities of Bonnand Munich and biochemistry at University College London. He went on to specialize in internal medicine and endocrinology at the University Hospitals of Mainz and Düsseldorf. He has also conducted research at the MRC Clinical Research Unit for Reproductive En...

Objective: The structure of psychological and somatic complaints of aging male patients in relation to sex hormone patterns and metabolism has not been fully elucidated, especially in regard to late-onset hypogonadism.Methods: We investigated the nature of complaints in 434 consecutive patients aged 50–86 years attending our andrology unit and their association with physical characteristics, life style habits and sex hormone levels.<p class="abs...

Objective: A reliable form of androgen substitution therapy in terms of favorable kinetics and tolerance as well as effective restoration of androgenicity is paramount in hypogonadal men. A feasible modality is the intramuscular injection of the long-acting ester testosterone undecanoate (TU).Design: We report data from 22 patients (15 with primary and 7 with secondary hypogonadism) aged 30 to 65 years (mean 43.8±8 years) who received injections of ...

Testosterone is the hormone that turns males into men and a lack of testosterone, whether of primary or secondary origin, causes hypogonadism characterized by lack of pubertal development or loss of maleness. It was generally assumed that in a man with a normal androgen receptor (AR) androgenicity is regulated by testosterone serum concentrations, slightly modified by SHBG. Only recently it became evident that variations in the AR gene influence testosterone action. Modulation...

Immature testicular tissue was successfully xenografted in several species but did not lead to spermatogenesis with tissue obtained from the non-human primate Callithrix jacchus. Previous data indicate that the microenvironment provided by the mouse host might cause this failure. We conducted an in vivo study performing autologous ectopic transplantation of testicular fragments in newborn anaesthetised marmoset monkeys and compared transplanted animals to sham op...

Evaluation of male fertility, based on semen analysis, is complicated by high variability of semen parameters and the lack of evidence-based reference values. The standards are currently set by the WHO laboratory handbook (1999). We investigated whether taking into account abstinence time and testicular volume would reduce variation in sperm concentration / count and thereby consolidate the underlying principles of spermatogenesis.The database of our Ins...