Endocrine Abstracts

Kennedy's disease (KD), also known as spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy, is one of eight polyglutamine diseases caused by an expansion of CAG repeats within the coding region of the affected gene. In KD, the CAG repeat region within the androgen receptor (AR) gene is increased to over 40 repeats, resulting in an expanded polyglutamine tract. Degeneration of a sub-population of neurones occurs in all polyglutamine diseases due to a toxic gain of function typically unrelated to...