Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Endothelial dysfunction may have deleterious effect cardiovascular pathology in diabetic patients.Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) exerts beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system in part by exerting antioxidant activity. Recently it was reported that ANP is able to exert an antihypertrophic effect in myocitos at least in part due to inhibition of NADPH oxidase and superoxido generation.It seems that hyperglucemia...

A 16-years-old male, with familiar precedents of familiar macrocephaly, he has been visited in external consultations of digestive in 2008 because he had rectal bleedings. A colonoscopy was made two times, in those situations some intestinal polyps have been extirpated. The result of the pathological antomy was polyps ganglioneuromas.Due to the pathological compatible anatomy with ganglioneuromas, it stemmed to external consultations of endocrinology to ...

Hypersecretion of hCG in transgenic mice produces profound alterations in the ovary, thus triggering failures in ovulation and affecting fertility. The objective of this study was to analyze the response of immature female mice overexpressing moderated (hCGβ+; 0.1 IU/ml) and elevated (hCGαβ+; 7 IU/ml) levels of hCG to an ovulation induction protocol (PMSG 7.5 IU i.p.; after 48 h, hCG 7.5 IU i.p). Wild-type (WT) females subjected to the same protocol were used as...

Temozolomide, an alkylating agent used in malignant gliomas, has been recently used too in the treatment of aggressive pituitary tumors. To date, two cases of Nelson’s syndrome has successfully treated with 5 days of 28-day cycle, but the follow-up has been shorter than 12 months. We reported the third patient with Nelson’s syndrome treated with temozolomide, who after an initial goal response to three 300 mg 5 days of 28-day cycles shown a clinical and biochemical (...

Genes that encode neuropeptides can be recognized in the human genome because their products are (1) highly conserved across species, (2) trafficked though cells by secretory signal peptides and (3) susceptible to proteolytic cleavage at consensus sequences for processing to neuroactive products. One candidate gene is oesophageal cancer-related gene (ECRG4) which was first identified by screening for up- or down-regulated genes in oesophageal cancer. The product of ECRG4, whic...

It was reported that the inhibition of central nervous system (CNS) axon growth is mediated by Ca2+-dependent phosphorylation of epidermal growth factor receptor (pEGFR) and that local administration of small molecule EGFR antagonists to optic nerve lesions promoted retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axon regeneration (Koprivica et al. 2005). This result was attributed to suppression of EGFR kinase, which neutralised the axonal growth inhibitory potency of CNS myeli...

Objective: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is often associated with severe mineral bone loss and increased risk of fractures. The objective of this study was to assess the bone mineral density (BMD) in patients with AN and its relationship with different anthropometrics, clinical and hormonal parameters.Patients and methods: We evaluated 47 women with AN according to criteria of DSM-IV. The anthropometrics variables measured were: weight (kg) height (m), BMI (kg/m...

Background: Diabetes mellitus leads to endothelium dysfunction and an accelerated progression of atherosclerosis. Vascular complications of diabetes mellitus can affect not only large and medium arteries resulting in coronary heart disease and peripheral arteries diseases, but also small vessels leading to retinopathy and nephropathy.Endothelin-1 is mainly synthesized by the vascular endothelial cells and acts on the vascular smooth muscle. Because of it...

The RET/GFRa/GDNF system displays a wide distribution in tissues such as nervous system, kidneys, intestine or testis. RET has been implicated in human pathologies. RET is a tyrosine-kinase receptor activated by four ligands GDNF, NTN, ART and PSPN through four co-receptors GFRa1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Activation of the receptor leads to cell differentiation or proliferation. Our group has shown that RET is expressed specifically in the somatotrope (GH) adult cell populatio...

Ghrelin is a pleiotropic hormone characterized mainly by its strong orexigenic action and its role as GH secretagogue.Age-related level variation of this hormone has been previously shown in different studies centred in mARN expression and in its plasma levels; however there is no data about its secretion directly from the stomach although this is the main ghrelin producing organ.Objectives: To determine the levels of ghrelin in th...