Hyponatremia is a clinically relevant disorder. Ten to twenty per cent of patients in hospitals are affected by it. Hyponatremia is found to occur in almost every clinical department. Recently, vasopressin antagonists have been licensed to treat hyponatremia of the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH). They provide physicians with the first specific and effective the...

Arginine vasopressin plays an important role in volume homeostasis. Patients with heart failure have chronically elevated plasma vasopressin concentrations which may contribute to their clinical syndrome of fluid retention. Recently, a number of agents have been developed to antagonize the effects of vasopressin by targeting its V1a and V2 receptors, which are involved in vascular tone and free...

The authors investigated the effects of postnatal manipulations of oxytocin (OT) on the subsequent tendency to form a partner preference in male prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster). Neonatally, males received either an injection of OT, an oxytocin antagonist (OTA), 0.9% saline vehicle, or handling without injection. As adults, males were tested for partner preference following 1 hr of cohabita...

IL-1ra is the first described naturally occurring receptor antagonist of any cytokine or hormone-like molecule. IL-1ra is a member of the IL-1 family by three criteria: amino acid sequence homology of 26 to 30% to IL-1 beta and 19% to IL-1 alpha; similarities in gene structure; and common gene localization to human chromosome 2q14. Two structural variants of IL-1ra exist: sIL-1ra, a secretory m...

The production of superantigenic exotoxins by Gram positive bacteria underlies the pathology of toxic shock syndrome. Future treatment strategies for superantigen-mediated diseases are likely to be directed at blocking the three-way interaction between superantigen, T cell receptor and major histocompatibility class II molecule, which inititates an excessive and disordered inflammatory response...