Interleukins (ILs), a fascinating family of cytokines. Part II: ILs from IL-20 to IL-38.

Every nucleated cell can produce and respond to cytokines, extracellular proteic/glycoproteic mediators that constitute a complex, interconnected, and flexible signaling network, addressed to modulate cell behavior and homeostasis through the interaction with high-affinity surface receptors. These messenger molecules, whose main characteristics are potency, pleiotropism, and redundancy, primarily act in autocrine, paracrine, and juxtacrine way, but can also display systemic activity in endocrine-like modality. They are generally classified according to their cellular sources, three-dimensional structure, or biological functions.

Epigenetics in autoimmune connective tissue diseases.

Unlabelled: Background. Autoimmune connective tissue diseases (ACTDs) encompass a heterogeneous group of chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disorders, primarily affecting connective tissues and clinically characterized by variable multisystem manifestations, frequently overlapping. Environmental factors are thought to promote ACTD development in genetic predisposing/endocrine permissive background through the induction of epigenetic modifications, consisting of stable, heritable, but potentially reversible changes in gene expression, occurring without alterations of the DNA sequence.

Interleukins (ILs), a fascinating family of cytokines. Part I: ILs from IL-1 to IL-19.

Every nucleated cell can produce and respond to cytokines, extracellular proteic/glycoproteic mediators that constitute a complex, interconnected, and flexible signaling network, addressed to modulate cell behavior and homeostasis through the interaction with high-affinity surface receptors. These messenger molecules, whose main characteristics are potency, pleiotropism, and redundancy, primarily act in autocrine, paracrine, and juxtacrine way, but can also display systemic activity in endocrine-like modality. They are generally classified according to their cellular sources, three-dimensional structure, or biological functions.

Focus on adipokines.

Once considered a passive reservoir for lipid storage and an inert provider of thermal/mechanical insulation, white adipose tissue (WAT) is presently seen as a highly dynamic endocrine organ that actively modulates a variety of physiologic processes, including energy balance, food intake, inflammation, immunity, metabolism, as well as cardio-vascular (CV) and neuroendocrine homeostasis. Actually, other than fatty acids and lipid moieties, WAT secretes a wide range of bioactive factors, considerably different in therms of structure and functions, including cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, complement system molecules, acute phase reactants, and hormones, among which the products predominantly or exclusively synthesized by and released from adipocytes are categorized as "adipokines". The adipokine expression is intimately linked to various parameters of adiposity (such as total body fat, percentage of body fat, and fat distribution), resulting generally (with very few exceptions, such as adiponectin, omentin, and Zinc-alpha2-glycoprotein) in positive correlation with WAT mass.

Cognition: neurobiological correlates and dynamics.

Human brain constructs knowledge, elaborates thought and promotes goal-directed behavior, organizing memories of past experience and information from the environment, perceived by senses. Cognition entails all these mental processes. Neuroscience has attempted to explore the architecture of cognition, whose neurobiological substrates are provided by widely distributed neural networks, interacting through complex connections, including sensory-fugal (inward or forward) and sensory-petal (outward or backward) projections, running in opposite direction.