Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: We previously reported the novel finding that leptin, and several other fat-derived hormones (adipokines), is expressed and regulated in rat hypothalamus (1). Subsequently leptin (ob) mRNA was found in human, sheep and pig brain, but was surprisingly undetectable in mouse brain. In the present experiments we used a mouse hypothalamic neuronal cell line to investigate possible inhibitory mechanisms that may prevent mouse neurons from expressing ob mRNA. These incl...

Aims/hypothesis: Resistin could be implicated in the mechanism of insulin resistance and recent evidence suggests this occurs, in part, via a brain-dependent pathway. Given the emerging role of hypothalamic AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) in the modulation of appetite and glucose levels, we hypothesized that its activity would be modulated by resistin. To verify such a pathway, we employed the N-1 hypothalamic neuronal cell line, which expresses a variety of neuropeptides ...