ANOVULATORY infertility is sometimes associated with an abnormal degree of hirsutism and, very occasionally, with more serious manifestations of virilization. In such cases it is usually possible to demonstrate excessive concentrations of androgenic steroids but these steroids may be derived from either the ovary or the adrenal cortex or from both these sources. This subject has been reviewed r...

Lummaa et al. (2007) presented historical data collected from twins born in Finland between 1734 and 1888 which suggested that females (N = 31) born as part of an opposite sex (OS) twin pair were 25% less likely to reproduce than female twins (N = 35) born as part of a same sex (SS) pair. They hypothesized that this reduction in fitness was due to masculinization of the female fetus via prenata...

The feminist movement purports to improve conditions for women, and yet only a minority of women in modern societies self-identify as feminists. This is known as the feminist paradox. It has been suggested that feminists exhibit both physiological and psychological characteristics associated with heightened masculinization, which may predispose women for heightened competitiveness, sex-atypical...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE The debate on the food-drug continuum could benefit from a historical dimension. This study aims at showing this through one case: the food-drug continuum in Greece in the fifth- and fourth-century BCE. I suggest that at the time the boundary between food and drug - and that between dietetics and pharmacology - was rather blurred. MATERIALS AND METHODS I study d...

Male and female twins with opposite-sex co-twins were compared to twins with same-sex co-twins on three independent dimensions of masculinity-femininity, in order to examine the hypothesis that the hormones of the co-twin might have an effect on prenatal masculinization. The analysis was originally carried out for an older cohort from the Australian Twin Registry (2647 pairs, mean age 41.2), an...

androstenedione may be similar. Unfortunately, the majority of publications to date that include data on the disposition of androstenedione do not detail changes in the AUCs of either androstenedione or testosterone as a measure of exposure. Assuming there is no large difference in steroid metabolic pathways between genders, then the difference in plasma androstenedione profiles observed may po...

In children, upto two-thirds of all adreno-cortical neoplasms present with virilization with or without hypercortisolism(l). These tumors may however remain non-functioning or may present with varying symptom complexes including feminization and hyperaldosteronism(2). The clinical and biochemical features of five children with adreno-cortical neoplasms presenting over a period of five years (19...

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia with failure of 11-hydroxylation (Eberlein and Bongiovanni, 1956) produces virilization and hypertension. The newborn girl reported here was originally thought to have this condition, but investigations revealed an abnormal steroid excretion of a type not previously described. In retrospect it was realized that the type of abnormal steroid which she produced had b...

Newly developed genetic models indicate that estrogen receptors (ERs) alone mediate prenatal masculinization of the mouse brain to organize reproductive and territorial behaviors, while postnatal activation of androgen receptors (ARs) potentiates specific components of those behaviors. These results and others offer a model of how AR and ER pathways interact to fully masculinize the brain and b...