Let's Get Healthy! Health awareness through public participation in an education and research exhibit.

Background: Health information technology (HIT) offers a resource for public empowerment through tailored information.

Objective: Use interactive community health events to improve awareness of chronic disease risk factors while collecting data to improve health.

Methods: Let's Get Healthy! is an education and research program in which participants visit interactive research stations to learn about their own health (diet, body composition, blood chemistry).

Serum ghrelin concentrations are increased in children with growth hormone insensitivity and decrease during long-term insulinlike growth factor-I treatment.

Background: Ghrelin increases food intake, body weight, and growth hormone (GH) secretion. Serum concentrations of ghrelin are low in obese hyperinsulinemic persons, are reduced by infusion of insulin into normal-weight subjects, and are increased in underweight hypoinsulinemic patients with anorexia nervosa. Laron syndrome is an autosomal recessive disorder of GH insensitivity that results in decreased insulinlike growth factor-I (IGF-I) synthesis and growth failure.

Prostacyclin signaling regulates circulating ghrelin during acute inflammation.

Ghrelin is an octanoylated 28 amino acid peptide predominantly secreted by the stomach, and has potent stimulatory effects on appetite. Several laboratories, including our own, have demonstrated that ghrelin levels fall in states of acute inflammation brought about by injection of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We now demonstrate that the decrease in circulating ghrelin is not due to a decrease in ghrelin gene expression, but is instead likely to be due to an acute decrease in ghrelin secretion.