Thyroid hormones are crucial during development and in the adult brain. Of interest, fluctuations in the levels of thyroid hormones at various times during development and throughout life can impact on psychiatric disease manifestation and response to treatment. Here we review research on thyroid function assessment in schizophrenia, relating interrelations between the pituitary-thyroid axis an...

OBJECTIVE Cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) is widely expressed in the rat brain, especially in the hypothalamic nuclei and in the anterior pituitary. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of CART on pituitary hormone release in pituitary cell culture. MATERIAL AND METHODS The pituitary hormone release from pituitary cell culture after CART administration was in...

Castrate male albino rats were injected with a growth-promoting extract of bovine anterior pituitary from the 21st day of life (day of castration) to the 56th day (average for group) at which time the difference in weight between the pituitary-injected animals and controls was first clearly discernible. In comparison to controls the pituitary-injected animals at this stage showed: (1) a decreas...

Angiotensin II (ANG II) receptors were quantitated in pituitary glands of individual male Long Evans rats by autoradiography after incubation of 8-microns thick pituitary sections with 125I-[Sar1]ANG II. Rat anterior pituitary had a single class of high-affinity saturable ANG II receptors with a Bmax of 1,360 +/- 109 fmol/mg protein and a Ka of 0.510 +/- 0.03 X 10(9) M-1. Five days of water dep...

Estrogens cause intrahepatic cholestasis in susceptible women during pregnancy, after administration of oral contraceptives, or during postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy. 17alpha-Ethinylestradiol (EE) is a synthetic estrogen widely used to cause experimental cholestasis in rodents with the aim of examining molecular mechanisms involved in this disease. EE actions on the liver are though...

In Persian traditional medicine is believed that camphor (a crystalline ketone obtained from cinnamomum camphora) is a suppressor of sexual behaviors. This study examined the central effects of camphor on sexual hormones (LH, FSH and testosterone) and GnRH plasma levels in male rat. Male Wistar rats weighing 250-260gr were selected and divided into control (no treatment), sham (ICV injection...

OBJECTIVE The present study was aimed to investigate the impact of postoperative pituitary tumor adrenal insufficiency and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on tumor recurrence. PATIENTS AND METHODS The prospective study included 143 pituitary tumor patients as study subjects. Within 6 months after the operation, the study was planned to explore differences (if any) between the tumor recurren...

The posterior lobe is an extension of the hypothalamus and secretes two hormones: antidiuretic hormone (or arginine vasopressin) and oxytocin. The pituitary stalk and the portal vessel pass through a small diaphragm that separates the sella turcica from the middle fossa. This anatomic arrangement places the pituitary at risk for infarction or hemorrhage when a mass increases pressure in the sel...

Exposure to bacterial endotoxins has long been known to stimulate the release of anterior pituitary hormones; administration of endotoxin was at one time a common clinical test of anterior pituitary function. Endotoxin is a potent stimulus for production of the endogenous pyrogenic protein, interleukin-1 (IL-1), by macrophages and monocytes. The possibility that IL-1 has a direct effect on the ...

As is the case with many other peptide hormones of the brain and intestine, the formation of biologically active gastrin from a glycine-extended processing intermediate occurs via the action of a peptidylglycyl alpha-amidating monooxygenase (PAM). The observation that gastrin exists primarily as unamidated precursors in the pituitary but as amidated gastrin in the antrum prompted this study to ...