BACKGROUND Many pregnant Muslim women choose to fast during Ramadan every year worldwide. This study aimed to examine the effect of Ramadan fasting on serum leptin, neuropeptide Y and insulin in pregnant women and find whether fasting during pregnancy could have a negative effect on the health of mothers and fetuses. METHODS This cross-sectional study was conducted on 39 healthy volunteer fas...

We previously found a relative sparing of somatostatin and neuropeptide Y neurons 1 week after producing striatal lesions with NMDA receptor agonists. These results are similar to postmortem findings in Huntington's disease (HD), though in this illness there are two- to threefold increases in striatal somatostatin and neuropeptide Y concentrations, which may be due to striatal atrophy. In the p...

Using the technique of homogenization and subsequent density gradient centrifugation combined with ultrastructural analysis, the subcellular localization of noradrenaline and neuropeptide Y (NPY) was studied in vas deferens of castrated male rats. Noradrenaline showed two peaks in the gradient: one major peak at low density and another at high density. Only one NPY peak was seen, which coincide...

Neuropeptide Y (NPY) was first identified from porcine brain in 1982, and plays its biological functions in humans through NPY receptors (Y1, Y2, Y4 and Y5). NPY receptors are known to mediate various physiological functions and involve in a majority of human diseases, such as obesity, hypertension, epilepsy and metabolic disorders. Recently, NPY receptors have been found to be overexpressed in...

In their classic experiments, Olds and Milner showed that rats learn to lever press to receive an electric stimulus in specific brain regions. This led to the identification of mammalian reward centers. Our interest in defining the neuronal substrates of reward perception in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster prompted us to develop a simpler experimental approach wherein flies could implemen...

In this study, we examined the effects of restricted feeding and of central administration of an orexigenic ghrelin agonist GHRP-6 on peptide mRNA expression in the hypothalamus. We compared rats fed ad libitum with rats that were allowed food for only 2?h every day, and treated with a continuous chronic i.c.v. infusion of GHRP-6 or vehicle. Ad libitum fed rats exposed to GHRP-6 increased their...

Neuropeptide Y was isolated from the porcine brain in 1982 and shown to be colocalized with noradrenaline in sympathetic nerve terminals. The peptide has been demonstrated to be present in sympathetic nerve fibers innervating the pineal gland in many mammalian species. In this investigation, we show by use of immunohistochemistry that neuropeptide Y is present in nerve fibers of the adult human...

Methamphetamine (METH) is an illicit drug that causes neuronal apoptosis in the mouse striatum, in a manner similar to the neuronal loss observed in neurodegenerative diseases. In the present study, injections of METH to mice were found to cause the death of enkephalin-positive projection neurons but not the death of neuropeptide Y (NPY)/nitric oxide synthase-positive striatal interneurons. In ...

Neuropeptide Y and norepinephrine are localized in sympathetic nerve terminals throughout the heart. We sought to determine the functional distribution of the neuropeptide Y-containing sympathetic fibers to the sinus and atrioventricular (AV) nodal regions. We recorded cycle length, AV interval, and arterial pressure in 14 anesthetized dogs. We assessed the release of neuropeptide Y from sympat...

Background. Myocardial adrenergic neurotransmitters and j-adrenergic receptor levels were measured in left and right ventricular myocardial specimens obtained from 30 patients with biventricular failure resulting from idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. Methods and Results. Nonfailing myocardium obtained from 12 organ donors provided control data. Norepinephrine, dopamine, and neuropeptide Y con...