Endocrine Abstracts

Male problems such as oligospermia, azoospermia among others, affect around 30% of infertile couples. Male fecundity relies on the production of large numbers of spermatozoa which is dependent on the number of Sertoli cells. Activin and related TGFβ family ligands regulate testicular development and function. Follistatin Like-3 (FSTL3) is a glycoprotein that binds and inhibits activin. FSTL3 deletion in mice leads to increased adult testicular size with concurrent increas...

Kisspeptin is a crucial activator of reproductive function, stimulating GnRH neurons in the hypothalamus. However, kisspeptin and its receptor are also expressed in other brain regions including the limbic system, which has key roles in emotional processing. Kisspeptin signalling in the limbic system modulates emotional and sexual brain processing during tasks, however the effects of kisspeptin on underlying resting brain activity have not yet been studied. This is vital for o...

FSH and its G protein-coupled receptor (FSHR) are essential for the coordination of reproductive functions. As such, they are a primary target of most assisted reproductive technologies, thus understanding the physiology regulating their function is paramount. Two naturally occurring glycoforms of FSH have been identified-hyperglycosylated FSH (FSH24) and hypoglycosylated FSH (FSH21), based on their ASN glycosylation pattern. The secretion of FSH21 and FSH24 has been shown to ...

Background: Recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) affects 1–2% couples, and is defined as ≧3 consecutive pregnancy losses before 20-weeks’ gestation. RPL is caused by foetal chromosomal abnormalities, or maternal factors such as thrombophilia. It was recently reported that men with RPL have high levels of sperm DNA fragmentation (a marker of infertility); however, the cause of this damage is currently not known. Seminal plasma has high levels of granulocyte-derived o...

Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in pregnant women and associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes, including pre-eclampsia. Active vitamin-D (1,25(OH)2D3) exerts important non-classical immune-regulatory effects, and the maternal placenta (decidua) appears a key target. Uterine natural killer cells (uNKs) are the most prominent decidual immune cell during early pregnancy. Given their critical role in fetal implantation and placentation, we hypothesised uNKs are a local source...

Somatic activating mutations in BRAF, encoding B-Raf, have been described in tumours and recently craniopharyngiomas. Germline mutations in BRAF and other components of the RAS/MAPK pathway are found in RASopathies, whose features include endocrine deficiencies but not craniopharyngiomas. We report three BRAF mutations (two of which are novel) in four children with congenital hypopituitarism. To demonstrate the functional role of the three variants w...