Introduction: Psychological stresses influence brain functions such as learning and memory. Environmental factors like types and durations of stress affect brain responsiveness. This study investigated the effects of two subchronic social and isolation stresses on learning, memory, adrenal glands weight and corticosterone levels in the hippocampus and frontal cortex. Methods: Eighteen male ...

Glucocorticoids, hormones produced by the adrenal gland cortex, perform numerous functions in body homeostasis and the response of the organism to external stressors. One striking feature of their regulation is a diurnal release pattern, with peak levels linked to the start of the activity phase. This release is under control of the circadian clock, an endogenous biological timekeeper that acts...

The adrenal gland is a dynamic organ that undergoes constant cell turnover. This allows for rapid organ remodeling in response to the physiological demands of the HPA axis, which is controlled by proopiomelanocortin (POMC)-derived peptides, such as adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and N-Terminal peptides (N-POMC). In the rat adrenal cortex, POMC-derived peptides trigger a mitogenic effect, an...

Defects of adrenoleukodystrophy protein (ALDP) lead to X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD), a disorder mainly affecting the nervous system white matter and the adrenal cortex. In the present study, we examine the expression of ALDP in various human tissues and cell lines by multiple-tissue RNA expression array analysis, Western blot analysis, and immunohistochemistry. ALDP-encoding mRNA is mo...

Adrenal gland pseudocysts are not common conditions, and most of them are nonfunctional and asymptomatic. However, large pseudocysts may causes abdominal discomfort and have compressive effects on adjacent organs. They may rupture spontaneously or after trauma, and lead to retroperitoneal hemorrhage and surgical emergency. Herein, we report a case of 21-year-old female who presented with acute ...

A single dose of 8 or 20 Gy Co γ rays was given to C3H male mice at 4 months of age. The ultrastructural changes in mouse pituitary, thyroid and the adrenal gland due to brain irradiation were observed at 4 days to 18 months after irradiation. The pituitary microvasculature showed degenerative lesions including swollen endothelial cells and cytoplasmic blebs in the capillary sinusoids of all ir...

BACKGROUND Cavernous hemangiomas are rare tumors, mainly localized in the liver and skin, but also reported in the cerebellum and eye fundus as a part of von Hippel Lindau Syndrome. Adrenal hemangiomas are less than 1% of all the adrenal neoplasms and usually are reported as benign, non-functioning tumors, originating from the adrenal cortex and surrounded by normal or hyperplastic adrenal tiss...

Our previous studies demonstrated that the epimedium herb, when simultaneously used with GCs, counteracted suppressive effects of GCs on the HPA axis without adverse influence on the therapeutic action of GCs. Here, total flavones were extracted from the epimedium flavonoids (EFs) and then used to investigate whether EFs provide protective effects on the HPA axis. We found that GCs induced a si...