Receptor disorders may produce specific clinical manifestations resembling hypo-or hyper-function of related endocrine gland. Receptor disorders can be divided into five categories: 1)Altered receptor concentration exists in insulin resistance seen in obsity, familial hypercholes­terolemia and in testicular feminization. 2) Altered receptor affinity can be seen in fasted obese patients, acromeg...

Many studies demonstrate that exposure to testicular steroids such as testosterone early in life masculinizes the developing brain, leading to permanent changes in behavior. Traditionally, masculinization of the rodent brain is believed to depend on estrogen receptors (ERs) and not androgen receptors (ARs). According to the aromatization hypothesis, circulating testosterone from the testes is c...

Vitellogenin (VTG) synthesis in male oviparous vertebrates is used as an indicator of environmental estrogen exposure, but the relationship between elevated VTG levels and the effects of environmental estrogens on reproductive success are poorly understood. To examine whether altered VTG expression predicts reproductive impairment, we exposed medaka (Oryzias latipes) for 2 or 8 weeks posthatch ...

It has been known for some years that apparently female patients are sometimes found to have an XY sex chromosome complement. Morris (1953) focused attention upon the syndrome of testicular feminization in which, despite the presence of XY sex chromosomes and testes, the phenotype and secondary sexual development are female. Harnden and Stewart (1959) applied the term pure gonadal dysgenesis to...

When evaluating the underlying causes of tall stature, it is important to differentiate pathologic tall stature from familial tall stature. Various pathologic conditions leading to adult tall stature include excess growth hormone secretion, Marfan syndrome, androgen or estrogen deficiency, testicular feminization, and sex chromosome anomaly, such as Klinefelter syndrome and XYY syndrome. Men wi...

In wild-type Caenorhabditis elegans there are two sexes, self-fertilizing hermaphrodites (XX) and males (XO). To investigate the role of tra-1 in controlling sex determination in germline tissue, we have examined germline phenotypes of nine tra-1 loss-of-function (lf) mutations. Previous work has shown that tra-1 is needed for female somatic development as the nongonadal soma of tra-1(lf) XX mu...

In women, excess production of the male hormone, testosterone (T), is accompanied by insulin resistance. However, hyperandrogenemia is also associated with beta-cell dysfunction and type 2 diabetes raising the possibility that androgen receptor (AR) activation predisposes to beta-cell failure. Here, we tested the hypothesis that excess AR activation produces systemic oxidative stress thereby co...