Endocrine Abstracts

The adrenal gland displays an important role in integrating neuronal, immune, vascular, metabolic and endocrine signals under a common organ capsule. The adrenal is the central organ of the stress response system, responsible for responses to acute and chronic stress stimuli and, thereby, playing a major role in numerous stress-related disorders. While for other diseases translational scientists developed programs to generate healthy cells to regenerate damaged tissues in pati...

Primary adrenal insufficiency is due to impairment of the adrenal gland with ~80% of the cases being due to autoimmune adrenalitis (Addison’s disease). Other cases of primary adrenal insufficiency might be idiopathic, caused by adrenal metastases, or due to congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Adrenal insufficiency might also be induced by infectious diseases e.g. COVID-19 and, as seen lately in an increasing number of patients, by novel medications targeting hypertension and ...

A tightly regulated stress system is pivotal for health and the adrenal cortex is a master regulator of the endocrine stress response. The adrenal cortex is characterized by constant cell renewal in part mediated by differentiation and lineage conversion of undifferentiated cell types. To date, the contribution of stem cells to organ plasticity during stress has been implicated but is not fully understood. Recently, we were able to show that a prolonged stress exposure leads t...

Evidence indicates that the adrenals are sexually dimorphic and asymmetric. These differences may have implications for the prevalence and progression of adrenal diseases, which also show asymmetry and sexual dimorphism. The present study aims to characterize the morphological and metabolic differences associated with adrenal sex and asymmetry in mice and humans. Adrenals were compared bilaterally in male and female C57B/6NRj mice with regard to morphological and hormonal char...