Endocrine Abstracts

When in the 1930s testosterone was isolated, synthesized and introduced to the clinic, it was considered predominantly a sex steroid to be used for the treatment of erectile dysfunction and hypogonadism. In the 1950s the anabolic effect was ‘discovered’ and triggered the misuse of high doses of testosterone in sports, still prevailing today. Consequently, pharmacologic research concentrated its efforts on anabolic steroids, i.e. testosterone analogues hopefully witho...

Even before the identities and structures of many hormones were established, endocrinologists and physiologists had speculated about the mechanism of their action. A hundred years later, we are still struggling to establish in molecular and cellular terms the mode of physiological action of a given hormone. Two major reasons account for this situation: i) the failure to recognise that hormones as signalling molecules have been highly conserved during evolution but that their p...

Colour perception depends on light, photoreception and central processing in the nervous system. Newton, in 1666, showed the coloured spectrum formed from white light passed through a prism underwent no further splitting on passing through a second prism. Newton favoured the corpuscular theory of light, opposing the wave theory of Huygens, which was taken up about 1800 by Thomas Young to explain experiments on diffraction and later formulated the trichromatic theory of human c...

I live in Umbria and have recently become concerned for the young couple, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, convicted of the horrific murder in Perugia on November 1st 2007 of English student Meredith Kercher, They were supposedly acting with an Ivorian, Rudy Guede, who was tried and convicted separately.I am still haunted by a wrongful conviction half a lifetime ago, which involved the murder of 11-year old Lesley Susan Molseed. Just before Christmas ...

For the last 15 years, I have suffered from the respectable addiction of collecting modern Scottish art. During that same period I have become alarmed by the many influences which have conspired, not always by chance, to reduce the professionalism of doctors. The intention is to illustrate my many prejudices in respect of issues, ranging from the European Working Time Directive to national guidelines, from loss of paternalism to the difficulties in conducting observational cli...

There are three types of academic research studies into the origins and maintenance of monogamous as opposed to promiscuous relationships in humans – economic, sociological, and biological – with seemingly little continuity between them. It may be obvious that all three influences can modify sexual behaviour, but it is a fact that though many reproductive strategies exist throughout the animal kingdom – and monogamy is perhaps surprisingly well represented in al...