I n 2011, severe asthma and/or insufficient control of disease remain major challenges for the pulmonologist [1]. Small airway involvement has been demonstrated by a number of studies, particularly in fatal, severe or poorly controlled asthma, and may be a potential target to improve treatment and asthma outcomes [2–5]. Although inhaled corticosteroids (ICSs) remain the cornerstone of asthma tr...

Glucocorticoids were first introduced in the 1940s and have become a widely prescribed class of drugs. Corticosteroids are a class of chemicals that includes steroid hormones naturally produced in the adrenal cortex of vertebrates and analogues of these hormones that are synthesized in laboratories. Corticosteroids are involved in a wide range of physiologic processes, including stress response...

A well developed extra-adrenal cortical body with an axis of 200-700 micron was found in eighteen of thirty adult male Wistar rats under a stereomicroscope. All eighteen bodies were located between the kidneys. Blood vascular beds of sixteen of the eighteen bodies were reproduced with a methacrylate casting medium and observed with a scanning electron microscope. The extra-adrenal cortical body...

In the ovine fetus, plasma levels of corticosteroids are very low between 60 and 130 days of gestation, then increase dramatically before birth. ACTH appears to be an important regulating hormone for the fetal adrenal cortex, the sensitivity of which to this hormone increases during late gestation. However, the relationship between immunoreactive ACTH and corticosteroids in the fetus is unclear...

Although the cells of the adrenal cortex can synthesize cholesterol from acetate [l] most of the cholesterol used for synthesis of corticosteroid hormones derives from plasma [2-41. Free and esterified cholesterol enter the adrenal cell in a form of a lipoprotein [S] either of high [6-81 or low density [9,10]. Chronic administration of corticotropin (ACTH) has been shown to stimulate not only t...

It was previously reported by the authors (1) that, in a normal rat with daily administration of 100 mg/kg borneol and intraperitoneal injection of 400 mg/kg glucuro nolactone for the period of 13 days, the amounts of total glucuronic acid, of o-glucuronide and of 1-ascorbic acid excreted in rat's urine, increased significantly, and that, in a bilate rally adrenalectomized rat administrated dai...

In previous works (Shibusawa and Inou, 1951; Shibusawa, Inou and Itou, 1952; Shibusawa, Inou and Osono, 1953; Shibusawa, Inou, Osono and Yoshimura, 1953; Shibusawa, Inou, Osono and Toshima, 1954; Shibusawa 1955) we have shown that the antidiuretic substance is released in the blood as a result of the hypothalamic-neurohypophyseal neurosecretion immediately after surgery. The antidiuretic substa...

The adrenal cortex is divided into concentric zones. In humans the major cortical zones are the zona glomerulosa, zona fasciculata, and zona reticularis. The adrenal cortex is a dynamic organ in which senescent cells are replaced by newly differentiated ones. This constant renewal facilitates organ remodeling in response to physiological demand for steroids. Cortical zones can reversibly expand...

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of sleep disturbance on histological features and evaluates expression StAR protein in cortex adrenal gland adult male rats. suprarenal glands are endocrine organs that directly affected by deprivation. Sleep is a stress factor affecting steroidogenesis since it regulated hypothalamic-pituitary axis (HPA). Its hormones cholesterol-derive...