an Endocrine Society Thematic Issue
Read our special collection of journal articles, published in 2021–2023, focused on biological rhythms! Curation of the collection was guided by Altmetric Attention Scores, article downloads, and Featured Article designations.
Recent years have seen a huge increase in research focused on rhythms, which are typically driven by interlinked biological clocks and influence a plethora of endocrine processes.
In Journal of the Endocrine Society, Calvert and colleagues report that although, in children, growth hormone is released in pulses during slow-wave sleep, in a small study, disruption of slow-wave sleep by sounds did not affect growth hormone secretion. The implication is that slow-wave sleep does not cause the pulses. Giessner and coauthors describe how the circadian rhythm in urinary catecholamines is disrupted in youth with type 2 diabetes — and note a blunted overnight fall in urinary epinephrine in males. Kelly and associates detail their findings with healthy adults subjected to three days of simulated nightshift work. The disruption had minimal effects on steroidogenesis, and adrenal steroids, but not gonadal hormones, showed endogenous circadian regulation robust to prior nightshift work.
In Endocrine Reviews, Dapas and Dunaif discuss genomic insights into the mechanisms behind polycystic ovary syndrome, which characteristically involves increased frequency and amplitude of pulsatile gonadotropin-releasing hormone secretion. Eng and associates, in a review of obesity-related hypogonadism in women, describe how obesity is associated with decreased luteinizing hormone pulse amplitude. And in a detailed survey of molecular derangements implicated in ACTH-dependent Cushing syndrome, Nieman describes how amplitude-modulated pulses of cortisol underlie its diurnal rhythm in healthy people but are mostly lost in that condition.
In Endocrinology, Onuma et al. report that intestine-specific deletion of the core clock gene Bmal1 impairs glucose absorption in the intestine and affects systemic glucose homeostasis. Wall and colleagues provide as a Technical Resource “the first detailed assessment” of fluctuating gonadal steroid and reproductive hormone levels across the mouse estrous cycle, an assessment that reveals some surprises. Sato and Sato review the extensive consequences of the circadian regulation of metabolism for health and disease, concluding that it “dominates” metabolic homeostasis and that chrononutritional strategies therefore have potential.
In The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Tatulashvili and colleagues report that, in most of a population of women living with type 1 diabetes, glucose levels rose linearly throughout the menstrual cycle, then fell sharply at the beginning of menstrual bleeding, an effect that should be taken into account in patient care. Gan and coauthors provide evidence that steeper diurnal cortisol slope is associated with a smaller, and higher midnight cortisol levels with a greater, risk of developing type 2 diabetes in patients with hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea. And Alvarez and coauthors describe findings indicating that ACTH variability is suppressed in Cushing disease, and that remission is associated with restoration of this variability.
Published: December 2023
It can be difficult to keep up to date in the rapidly evolving and expanding world of endocrine science. We curate topical collections of research from across our journals, Endocrine Reviews, Endocrinology, Journal of the Endocrine Society, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, and JCEM Case Reports so that you can easily find and read recent, influential articles on the topics that interest you.
Selection in each Thematic Issue is guided by online metrics, including Altmetric Attention Scores, Featured Article designations, and identification of leading authors and key topics. Each month, we publish a new Thematic Issue online and work to highlight and promote endocrine science in the press, through email, on social media and across other distribution channels.
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