BACKGROUND In primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) significant therapeutic effects of glucocorticoids have not been documented. The most important clinical problem in patients with these diseases is fatigue, which is occasionally invalidating. Abnormalities in the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis have been suggested as a cause of fatigue. Most effects of gl...

Endogenous glucocorticoids are known to play a role in the regulation of the inflammatory response possibly by modulating pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine expression. We examined endogenous glucocorticoid secretion, hepatic damage, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and interleukin-10 (IL-10) mRNA expression and release in rats treated with carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) after treatment with vehi...

Glucocorticoid hormones play a key role in the stress response, but plasma concentrations vary based on physiological, environmental, or social parameters. However, hormone titers alone do not determine organismal response. To enhance our understanding of glucocorticoid actions we can examine 'downstream' factors in the organismal stress response, measuring glucocorticoid receptors across targe...

Glucocorticoids are necessary for life after birth and regulate numerous homeostatic functions in man, including glucose homeostasis, protein catabolism, skeletal growth, respiratory function, inflammation, development, behavior, and apoptosis. In a clinical setting, they are widely used as anti-inflammatory agents to control both acute and chronic inflammation. Unfortunately, owing to their br...

The constitutive androstane receptor (CAR, NR1I3) transcriptionally activates cytochrome P450 2B6, 2C9, and 3A4 when activated by xenobiotics, such as phenobarbital. Information on the human CAR promoter was obtained by searching the NCBI human genome database. A contig (NT026945) corresponding to a fragment of chromosome 1q21 was found to contain the complete CAR gene. These data were confirme...

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of etomidate and propofol pretreatment on the expression of glucocorticoid receptor and the prognosis of sepsis. The sepsis rat was used as a model. During glucocorticoid treatment, etomidate and propofol were applied alone or together at different time points. Survival curves, glucocorticoid receptor expression in the rat adrenal cortex, and in...

A dose response curve for glucocorticoid-induced proximal and distal colonic cation transport in vivo was established in adrenalectomized rats. All doses (0.5-50 nmol/100 g body wt) stimulated sodium absorption. Distal sodium absorption did not saturate at dexamethasone levels that saturate the glucocorticoid receptor but also bind to greater than 35% of aldosterone receptors. Saturation of the...

We examined the effect of phytohemagglutinin (PHA) on glucocorticoid receptors in lymphocytes, using peripheral mononuclear leukocytes from patients with connective tissue diseases. Glucocorticoid receptor concentrations and dissociation constants (Kd) for [3H]dexamethasone binding to lymphocytes from patients with rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren's syndrome, and other connective tissue diseases d...

The present study demonstrates glucocorticoid receptor localization in the nuclei of cells of the anterior epithelium and bow region and its absence in all other regions of the lens. Both autoradiographic and biochemical studies show that triamcinolone acetonide is inactive whereas tetrahydrocortisol (previously considered to be an inactive metabolite of cortisol) is an active competitor of dex...