PLACENTAL HORMONES

Placental hormones and the control of fetal growth

Linear growth in the postnatal period is controlled by the production, secretion, and action of pituitary growth hormone and IGF-1. IGF-I and IGF-II production and signaling are also essential for fetal growth and neural development. But the control of IGF production in the fetus is largely independent of GH. Among the factors that control fetal IGF production, the availability and utilization ...

Enzymes involved in the formation and transformation of steroid hormones in the fetal and placental compartments.

Human fetal and placental compartments have all the enzymatic systems necessary to produce steroid hormones. However, their activities are different and complementary: the fetus is very active in converting acetate into cholesterol, in transforming pregnanes to androstanes, various hydroxylases, sulfotransferases, whilst all these transformations are absent or very limited in the placenta. This...

The Role of Thyroid Hormones in Placental and Fetal Central Nervous System Development

Quantitative participation of placental mammotropic hormones in mammary development during pregnancy of mice.

In order to elucidate the importance of the biological role of placental mammotropic hormones in the mammary development during pregnancy, the correlations between the number and weight of placentae and some indices of mammary development were examined using nulliparous C3H/He pregnant mice. On day 8 of pregnancy, the number of placentae was adjusted to 1-12 each by removing surgically the plac...

Recombinant hormones from fragments of human growth hormone and human placental lactogen.

Peptide fragments generated by limited plasmin digestion and reduction of human growth hormone (hGH) and human placental lactogen (hPL) were recombined to produce biologically active molecules consisting of the NH2-terminal two-thirds of one hormone molecule linked to the COOH-terminal one-third of the other. Plasmin-cleaved hPL and hGH each consist of an NH2-terminal fragment (1-134) connected...