1,721,384 research outputs found
"Dopamine receptor expression and role of dopamine D2 receptor activation in pituitary and adrenaltumors”.
No full text"Realizzazione, sperimentazione, messa a punto, sviluppo e reindustrializzazione di un metodo biomolecolare integrato (“hepatochip”) per la caratterizzazione diagnostica e prognostica di lesioni epatiche correlate o meno ad infezioni virali"
No full textPRIN "AMLET - Androgeni, Metabolismo, stiLe di vita, ambiEnte: funzione Testicolare per la salute"
No full textPause: Premature ejaculation actual use sefety and effectiveness study. Studio prospettico osservazionale su pazienti con eiaculazione precoce trattati con Priligy o terapie alternative.
No full text
PON "Ricerca e sviluppo di farmaci biologici innovativi in oncologia: produzione di frammenti di anticorpi monoclonali peghilati e di miRNA ad uso terapeutico e o diagnostico"
No full textThe diagnosis of secondary adrenal insufficiency: low dose vs high dose ACTH stimulation test.
No full textThis is an editorial on the diagnosis of secondary adrenal insufficienc
Accordi di programma "Piattaforme tecnologiche avanzate per la definizione di nuovi biomarkers e bersagli molecolari in vettori nanotecnologici per la diagnosi e la terapia di neoplasie umane"
No full textDopamine receptor expression and function in the normal and pathological hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis
Full text link__Abstract__
Dopamine is the predominant catecholamine neurotransmitter in the human central
nervous system, where it controls a variety of functions including cognition,
emotion, locomotor activity, food intake and endocrine regulation. Dopamine also
plays multiple roles in the periphery as a modulator of cardiovascular and renal
function, gastrointestinal motility and the endocrine system (1). Dopamine exerts its
functions via the binding with dopamine receptors (1). Dopamine receptors belong
to the family of seven transmembrane domain G protein-coupled receptors and
include five different receptor subtypes, named D1-Ds. The members of dopamine
receptor family are encoded by genes localized on different chromosome loci,
displaying a considerable homology in their protein structure and function. The
analysis of dopamine receptor structure and function suggests the existence of two
different groups of receptors: D1-like, including D1 and D5 receptors, associated to a
stimulatory function, and Dz-like, including Dz, D3 and D4 receptors, associated to
an inhibitory function. The D1 and Ds receptors are encoded by intronless genes
and share an 80% homology in their transmembrane domains. The Dz receptor
shares a 75% homology with the D3 and a 53% homology with the D4
transmembrane domains and all three receptor subtypes are encoded by genes,
which are interrupted by introns. The Dz receptor exists in two main variants, called
Dzlong and Dzshort, generated by an alternative splicing of an 87 base pairs exon.
These two D2 receptor isoforms differ for the presence or absence of a stretch of 29
amino acids in the third cytoplasmic loop in their protein structure. Splicing variants
of the D3 receptor encoding nonfunctional proteins have been also identified. The
analysis of the D4 receptor reveals the existence of polymorphic variations within
the coding sequence, being a 48 base pairs sequence existent as a direct repeat
sequence (D4.1), fourfold (D4.4), sevenfold (D4.7) or eleven fold (D4.11) repeat
sequence. Therefore, the D4 receptor isoforms differ for the length of the third
cytoplasmic loop and have one, four, seven or eleven times the same insert of a
stretch of 19 amino acids in their protein structure. The Ds receptor has two related
pseudogenes, which share a 95% homology with the gene and encode for truncated
non functional forms of the receptor (1). The molecular characteristics of human
dopamine receptor family are summarized in Table 1. A schematic representation
of the human dopamine receptor is shown in Fig. 1
Investigational therapies for acromegaly.
No full textINTRODUCTION:
The treatment of acromegaly aims at normalizing growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) levels and controlling tumor growth. The approaches to therapy are essentially three: surgery and pharmacotherapy, alone or in combination, and radiotherapy, generally used in more aggressive tumors.
AREAS COVERED:
This review focuses on the novel drug formulations being developed for medical therapy of acromegaly. Even though many efficient treatments have been made available to manage acromegaly in the last two decades, a significant number of patients remain still uncontrolled. Medical therapy represents an important therapeutic option and can be used as the first-line treatment in many patients. However, roughly 25% of patients might be considered as poor responsive or resistant to conventional long-acting somatostatin analogs (SSA) treatment. Therefore, new longer-acting SSA, oral SSA formulations, new combined therapies with weekly doses of pegvisomant, combination therapy with pegvisomant (PEG) and cabergoline (CAB) or SSA and new approaches have been proposed. New molecules are currently under investigation in clinical trials, such as the SSA multi-receptor ligand, pasireotide, which represents a promising option therapy, especially in patients not adequately controlled with currently available SSA. Further, temozolomide has been suggested as an efficient drug for treating GH-aggressive pituitary tumors resistant to conventional therapy.
EXPERT OPINION:
All these novel SSA formulations and new molecules implement the available options in therapies of acromegaly to improve disease control. However, further studies are needed to define the exact role of these newer agents. The predicting factors for response to these new therapies should also be determined
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