Testosterone levels during systemic and inhaled corticosteroid therapy.

Testosterone has importance both as a sex hormone and as an anabolic steroid promoting bone formation. Osteoporosis is associated with both hypogonadism and corticosteroid therapy. Testosterone levels are reduced by long term prednisolone treatment.

Acute cholinergic blockade with low dose pirenzepine reduces the insulin and glucose responses to a mixed meal in obese women with the polycystic ovary syndrome.

Objectives: Pirenzepine, a selective muscarinic cholinergic antagonist, reduces plasma insulin and plasma glucose responses to a mixed meal in a dose dependent fashion in normals and in patients with non-insulin dependent diabetes. We have studied the effects of pirenzepine on plasma insulin, plasma glucose, growth hormone (GH), androstenedione, testosterone, insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and IGF binding protein 1 (IGFBP-1) responses to a mixed meal in obese clinically hyperandrogenic women with the polycystic ovary syndrome.

Subjects And Methods: Six obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome (BMI range 27.

Maternity blues and major endocrine changes: Cardiff puerperal mood and hormone study II.

Objectives: To define relation between mood and concentrations of progesterone and cortisol during perinatal period to test hypothesis that rapid physiological withdrawal of steroid hormones after delivery is associated with depression.

Design: Prospective study of primiparous women from two weeks before expected date of delivery to 35 days postpartum.

Setting: Antenatal clinic in university hospital, obstetric inpatient unit, patients' homes.

Endogenous sex hormones and ischemic heart disease in men. The Caerphilly prospective study.

Numerous case-control studies have suggested that elevated levels of endogenous estrogen and low levels of testosterone are associated with ischemic heart disease (IHD) in men. These findings were tested in the Caerphilly study of 2,512 men from the general population who were aged 45-59 years at baseline and were followed for 5 years. Some 153 men experienced a new episode of IHD (fatal and nonfatal) during the period of follow-up.

Cardiff puerperal mood and hormone study. 1. Saliva steroid hormone profiles in late pregnancy and the puerperium: endocrine factors and parturition.

Participants were 120 primiparous women who had vaginal delivery of a non-handicapped child. Saliva was collected twice daily through parturition to day 35 post-partum. In the prepartum, a highly significant circadian rhythm was seen in cortisol, with a lower-amplitude rhythm in progesterone (AM/PM = 1.