Endocrine Abstracts

Cardiac contractility, electrophysiology and energy metabolism are markedly dependent on the level of circulating thyroid hormone. Some of the effects are secondary to changes in heart rate and systemic blood pressure, but most genes involved in the effects on cardiac function are transcriptionally regulated by T3. Knock-out models in which expression of the various T3-receptors (TR) was manipulated indicate a principal role of TRα, although signalli...

Thyroid hormone (T3) is mostly produced in peripheral tissues by thyroxine (T4) deiodination, and its functional effects are directly related to tissue concentration, which is quite difficult to assay by conventional immunological methods. We report a novel technique, based on tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) coupled to HPLC, which was used in left ventricular myocardium obtained from rat and human hearts.Samples were homogenized in...