ECE2014 Symposia News from thyroid hormones: central transport, energy control and oxidative stress (3 abstracts)
Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
Thyroid hormone is a critical regulator of brain development, function, and metabolism. The hypothalamo-pituitarythyroid (HPT) axis controls thyroid hormone secretion of the thyroid gland. In humans, this process generates predominantly thyroxine, a stable prohormone that cannot efficiently ligand nuclear thyroid hormone receptors prior to its activation to T3. Since the HPT axis is not capable for rapid and tissue-specific control of thyroid hormone levels, a separate system, the deiodinase enzyme family performs this task representing a prerequisite for tight-controlled thyroid hormone action. In the brain, type 2 deiodinase catalysed glial thyroid hormone activation and type 3 deiodinase mediated neuronal thyroid hormone inactivation act in concert in order to fine-tune thyroid levels under physiological and pathophysiological conditions. The talk will present current aspects of thyroid hormone metabolism in a neuro-glial context to discuss the deiodinase-mediated control of the HPT axis and hippocampal function.