Demosthenes B. Panagiotakos
Based on statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), the proportion of people over the age of 60 years is growing faster than any other age-group and, in many countries, it is the fastest growing segment of the population …
Mubarak Al-Gahtany, Eva Horvath, Kalman Kovacs
Pituitary hyperplasia is rare, difficult to diagnose and sometimes controversial. The hyperplasia could be physiologic which is usually reversible, or pathologic which varies in presentation from incidental to tumor like lesion with and without hormonal disturbance. Any pituitary cell is capable of undergoing hyperplasia in the presence of the right stimuli …
Amos Pines
A dramatic change has occurred over the past decade with regard to the use of hormones during the postmenopausal period. In the 90’s, the belief in the USA being that there was reason to recommend hormone therapy (HT) for the prevention of coronary artery disease, the guidelines of the American College of Physicians in 1992 were as follows …
Eirini Lioudaki, Niki G. Mavroeidi, Dimitri P. Mikhailidis, Emmanouel S. Ganotakis
Subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH), defined as elevated serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) in the presence of normal circulating free thyroxine (FT4) and triiodothyronine (T3), is a relatively common condition. Replacement treatment with levothyroxine is justified only for individuals with TSH levels >10 mIU/l …
Edward M. Brown
The system that regulates extracellular calcium (Ca2+o) homeostasis maintains a nearly constant level of Ca2+o so as to ensure the availability of calcium for its numerous intra- and extracellular roles. The molecular cloning and characterization of a G protein-coupled, Ca2+o-sensing receptor has elucidated the mechanism through which parathyroid cells …
Martin O. Savage, Helen L. Storr, Ashley B. Grossman, Gerasimos E. Krassas
Although paediatric Cushing’s disease is rare, it is associated with severe morbidity in childhood and presents a major diagnostic and therapeutic challenge for the paediatric endocrinologist. Growth failure remains an important feature of paediatric Cushing’s disease, both at diagnosis and after successful treatment. However, the development of specific diagnostic tests and important therapeutic advances has contributed …
Catherine Dacou-Voutetakis
The realization that the environment exerts a favorable or unfavorable effect on the human organism is not new. In the remote past, not only physicians but philosophers (e.g. Plato, Aristotle) as well wrote about the adverse effects of a maltreated environment, while Theophrastus (a student of Plato and Aristotle) is considered the father of ecology …
Poupak Fallahi, Silvia Martina Ferrari, Dilia Giuggioli, Andreina Manfredi, Caterina Mancusi, Silvia Fabiani, Marco Centanni, Santino Marchi, Clodoveo Ferri, Alessandro Antonelli
OBJECTIVE: The prevalence and clinical features of thyroid involvement in patients with hepatitis C virus-associated mixed cryoglobulinemia (MC+HCV) have been reviewed. DESIGN: A PubMed Medline search was conducted through December 2011 to identify all studies that reported thyroid involvement …
Gerasimos P. Sykiotis, Athanasios G. Papavassiliou
Nuclear receptors are ligand-regulated transcription factors that evolved from an ancestral orphan receptor into a highly diverse family present throughout the entire animal kingdom. They encompass receptors for steroid and non-steroid hormones, vitamins and metabolic intermediates. These receptors signal through endocrine, paracrine, autocrine and intracrine networks …
Gerasimos P. Sykiotis, Panagiotis A. Konstantinopoulos, Athanasios G. Papavassiliou
The biomedical sciences are currently in transition between the bloom of fundamental knowledge and the fruition of specialized clinical application.1 Following the success of the Human Genome Project, the roadmap is now in place for the description of physiology and illness in molecular terms…
Leonard Wartofsky
Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy with more deaths annually than all other endocrine cancers combined. Medical centers in many parts of the world have noted an increasing frequency of cases of thyroid cancer. The general impression has been that if there is a rising frequency, it was likely due to some environmental cause …
Chittari Venkata Harinarayan
The vitamin D endocrine system in now recognized as subserving a wide range of fundamental biological functions in cell differentiation, inhibition of cell growth as well as immunomodulation. Both forms of immunity, namely adaptive and innate, are regulated by 1,25(OH)2D3. The immune-modulatory properties of vitamin D suggest …
Achille Gravanis, Antonis Makrigiannakis, Ekaterini Chatzaki, Emmanuel Zoumakis, Christos Tsatsanis, Andrew N. Margioris
Human endometrium exhibits characteristics of a neuroendocrine-like stress organ in addition to its classical role as the main target of ovarian steroid hormones. Indeed, the epithelial cells of human endometrium express the stress-associated neuropeptide genes corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), proopiomelanocortin, proenkephalin and prodynorphin…
Richard Fleming
Insulin resistance is an important “upstream” driver for reproductive and metabolic abnormalities in women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). This theoretical background is now supported by substantial evidence for treating women with PCOS with insulin sensitising agents such as metformin or the thiazolidinediones…
Derek V. Henley, Kenneth S. Korach
A large number of natural and synthetic chemicals have been identified that are reported to disrupt the normal functioning of the endocrine system and produce untoward effects in hormone-responsive target tissues and organs in both humans and animals. These chemicals are broadly referred to as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and consist of numerous physically …
Atieh Amouzegar, Ladan Mehran, Farzaneh Sarvghadi, Hossein Delshad, Fereidoun Azizi, John H. Lazarus
Thyroid hormones play a critical role in neurodevelopment both during pregnancy and postnatally. The fetal thyroid produces sufficient amounts of thyroid hormones just after 16 weeks of pregnancy prior to which the fetus is totally dependent on maternal FT4 for its physical and neural development …
Vera Popovic, Felipe F. Casanueva
Recent data suggest that in addition to leptin’s role in conveying signals of the amount of energy stores to the central nervous system, this adipocyte secreted hormone interacts with the endocrine system to provide critical information about the size of fat stores, acting as a permissive factor that allows the triggering of energy demanding situations …
Polyzois Makras, Georgios Toloumis, Dimitrios Papadogias, Gregory A. Kaltsas, Michael Besser
Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a physically and psychologically disabling disease associated with high morbidity resulting from inappropriate elevation of circulating free cortisol levels. The main features of CS are disturbance of the normal circadian rhythm of cortisol secretion, impairment of the normal feedback of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis …
Gonzalo Díaz Soto, Irene Halperin, Mattia Squarcia, Francisco Lomeña, Manuel Puig Domingo
In recent years thyroid imaging has marked exponential progress, considerably changing the approach to diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, follow-up and evaluation of high prevalence thyroid diseases such as goitre, thyroid nodules and primary thyroid cancer. What is more, this notable technical advance has proven its ability to effectively confront such complex challenges …
Ioannis P. Stathopoulos, Efstathios G. Ballas, Kalliopi Lampropoulou-Adamidou, George Trovas
While osteoporosis has been traditionally considered as a disease of aging women, it is becoming an increasingly important male health problem, with one in three fragility fractures after the age of 50 years occurring in men …
Ioannis Ilias, Salvatore Alesci, Philip W. Gold, George P. Chrousos
The longer life expectancy of women than that of men and, therefore, the longer exposure to fracture risk has, at least partially, led to neglect of osteoporosis in men. Recently, unipolar depression, which is 2 times more frequent in women than in men, has been linked to osteoporosis…
Katerina Saltiki, Maria Alevizaki
Coronary heart disease is the main cause of death in women. Women during reproductive years are at lower risk for coronary heart disease than men but this difference tends to disappear after the menopause. In this article, we briefly review the clinical and experimental data which highlight the protective role of endogenous estrogens in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease …
Dragan Micic, Goran Cvijovic, Vladimir Trajkovic, Leonidas H. Duntas, Snezana Polovina
Metformin is considered, in conjunction with lifestyle modification, as a first-line treatment modality for type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). Recently, several clinical studies have reported reduced incidence of neoplastic diseases in DM type 2 patients treated with metformin, as compared to diet or other antidiabetic agents …
Maria P. Yavropoulou, Anna Maladaki, John G. Yovos
Pituitary adenomas are usually benign tumors that cause symptoms by compression of surrounding structures or impaired hormone secretion. Treatment, whether surgical or medical depends, on the tumor subtype and degree of compression; however, a significant proportion of patients do not achieve optimal control …
Christos C. Zouboulis
Hormones influence the development and function of human skin which also produces and releases hormones. Recently attention has been focused on identifying and understanding the complex endocrine properties of human skin, such as expression and function of specific hormone receptors, synthesis of hormones from major classes of compounds used by the body for general purposes …