OBJECTIVE Animal studies have indicated that maternal androgen levels influence the intrauterine environment and development of the offspring. Human data are missing. We therefore investigated the possible association between maternal androgens and offspring size at birth in humans. DESIGN A random sample of parous Caucasian women (n=147) was followed prospectively through pregnancy. METHOD...

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), a pesticide once used widely in agriculture and now limited to public health use, remains a controversial chemical because of a combination of benefits and risks. DDT or its breakdown products are ubiquitous in the environment and in humans. Compounds in the DDT family have endocrine actions and have been associated with reproductive toxicity. A previous s...

BACKGROUND Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is a pregnancy-associated liver disease of unknown etiology. The aim of this study was to investigate the change in maternal and fetal adrenal function in clinical and experimental ICP. MATERIAL/METHODS The maternal and fetal serum levels of cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) were determined in 14 women with ICP and in pr...

Normal aging in humans has been recently shown to be accompanied by reduced control over production of the multifunctional cytokine IL-6. This cytokine was reported to be quantitatively elevated in most serum samples obtained from "normal" elderly humans. In the present investigation, we report that IL-6 levels are elevated in serum samples obtained from aged mice, and its spontaneous productio...

OBJECTIVE We investigated whether there is a relationship between androgens levels and well-being in pre- and postmenopausal women. DESIGN We randomly recruited 1423 women aged 18 to 75 years from the community via the electoral roll. Each provided a morning blood sample and completed the Psychological General Well Being Index questionnaire on the same day. Women were excluded if they took me...

tamarindus indica is used as a traditional treatment for diabetes. to elucidate whether tamarindus indica seed aqueous extract (tse) ameliorates metabolic syndrome in hyperinsulinemic rats, we evaluated serum insulin, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (dheas), triglyceride (tg), total cholesterol (tc), very low density lipoprotein (vldl), low density lipoprotein (ldl), high density lipoprotein (hd...

Reductions in breast cancer risk observed in daughters of pre-eclamptic pregnancies are hypothesized to be mediated by lower in utero estrogen concentrations. Whereas maternal urinary estriol excretion is generally lower in pre-eclamptic women, results for maternal blood concentrations are equivocal, and little is known about estrogen concentrations in the cord of pre-eclamptic pregnancies. Unc...