Previous studies from our laboratories demonstrated that dietary NaCl supplementation in NaCl-sensitive spontaneously hypertensive rats elevates blood pressure, increases peripheral sympathetic nervous system activity, and depresses endogenous norepinephrine stores and turnover in the anterior hypothalamus. These findings suggest that reduced noradrenergic input to sympathoinhibitory neurons in...

Purinton, Scott C., Howard Newman, Maria I. Castro, and Charles E. Wood. Ontogeny of estrogen sulfatase activity in ovine fetal hypothalamus, hippocampus, and brain stem. Am. J. Physiol. 276 (Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 45): R1647–R1652, 1999.—Ovine parturition is initiated by increases in fetal hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, which in turn increase placental estro...

In order to investigate how photoperiod affects the expression of KiSS-1/G-protein-coupled receptor 54 (GPR54), the hypothalamus, the ovaries and testicles of the striped hamster were studied following photoperiod treatment and melatonin injection. We found that the melatonin concentration in the blood of the striped hamster was consistent with the treated photoperiods and that the photoperiod ...

Experiments were designed to localize the central sites of action of melatonin involved in the control of seasonal reproduction. Ewes were exposed to long days and received microimplants of melatonin in the preoptic area (n = 9), anterior hypothalamus (n = 4), dorsolateral hypothalamus (n = 4), or mediobasal hypothalamus (n = 12). The effects of implants were determined by comparison with contr...

BACKGROUND The proportion of saturated fatty acids/unsaturated fatty acids in the diet seems to act as a physiological regulation on obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. Differently composed fatty acid diets may induce satiety of the hypothalamus in different ways. However, the direct effect of the different fatty acid diets on satiety in the hypothalamus is not clear. METHODS Thre...

In this outline of the neural control of food intake, no attempt has been made to provide a comprehensive survey of the literature since there are several symposia and reviews available which summarize the extensive work in this field (Grossman, 1975; Novin et al. 1976; Silverstone, 1976; Morgane & Panksepp, 1980; Hoebel & Novin, 1982). Instead some current concepts of the neural control of foo...

Insulin receptor substrate-2-deficient (IRS2(-/-)) mice are considered a good model to study the development of diabetes because IRS proteins mediate the pleiotropic effects of insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and insulin on metabolism, mitogenesis and cell survival. The hypothalamus might play a key role in the early onset of diabetes, owing to its involvement in the control of glucose hom...

The existence of a hypothalamic gonadotropin-inhibiting system has been elusive. A neuropeptide named gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH, SIKPSAYLPLRF-NH(2)) which directly inhibits gonadotropin synthesis and release from the pituitary was recently identified in quail hypothalamus. Here we identify GnIH homologs in the human hypothalamus and characterize their distribution and biological act...

The cytokine IL-1 mediates diverse forms of neurodegeneration, but its mechanism of action is unknown. We have demonstrated previously that exogenous and endogenous IL-1 acts specifically in the rat striatum to dramatically enhance ischemic and excitotoxic brain damage and cause extensive cortical injury. Here we tested the hypothesis that this distant effect of IL-1 is mediated through polysyn...

Using an indirect immunoperoxidase technique, we studied the location of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone-like fibers and cell bodies in the cat diencephalon. In the thalamus, almost all the immunoreactive fibers were found in the midline region, whereas in the hypothalamus immunoreactive fibers were observed in the whole structure. The hypothalamus showed a higher density of both immunorea...