5 posts tagged “endocrinology”

The Nose Knows?

Apr 28, 2009
17 comments

Every once in a while at The Aerie, I’ll come home a little weary and The Beloved will hug me and say, “You don’t smell like you. You’re sick.”, which I usually say is crap, because, well, I never like to admit when I’m sick and human olfaction is pretty crappy – even if you take into account women’s superior sense of smell compared to men’s. Even if I am sick, I can’t smell sick. This usually leads to a happy hour discussion that revolves around the sense of smell in humans – specifically, are there human pheromones that produce biological responses?

Smells good?

What are pheromones? Pheromones are chemicals released from one individual in a species that cause a biological response in others. Some of the common responses are to “sound” an alarm, leave a trail, mark territory, or attract a mate. They are well documented in insects, fish, and mammals. They are not, however, known in humans. In mammals that use pheromones, there’s a mass behind the nose called the vomeronasal organ (VNO) – which specifically receives and transmits pheromone signals.

VNO (hamster)

Lots of animals have this organ – humans do not. Ipso facto, no human pheromone response, right?

Maybe not. Recent research has found a separate pheromone detecting system in mice that bypasses the VNO and directly activates the gonadal axis. Importantly, humans DO have a homologous system. A compound found* to be in high concentration in men’s armpits – androstadienone – has been found to improve the moods and increase sexual arousal of women that smell it compared to other scents (the analogous compound for men seems to be estratetraenol, which is found in women’s urine**). And brain imaging scans of women exposed to androstadienone showed increased activity in the hypothalamus***, an area known to influence mate choice and sexual behavior in animals.

Drives Them Crazy

So where does that leave us? Are we at the mercy of compounds that we’re not even aware that we secrete and detect? Or does our “higher” brain circumvent, override and/or justify our attractions and behaviors? Certainly, I think it’s much more the latter, but it is fascinating to know that we’re still learning more about our own biology all the time.

* one of the leaders in this area is a guy with the name of George Petri. Seriously.

** wow, I am not going there.

*** it also lit up homosexual mens' hypothalamus, but not those of heterosexual men.

Get Your PHD Today!

Jan 14, 2009
15 comments

No – I’m not advocating carving out 4+ years to work like a dog for a sub-minimum wage salary in laboratory settings that would make an OSHA inspector blanch.*

I’m talking about getting your own Diabetes PHD (Personal Health Decisions) analysis using a new interactive tool developed by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). The PHD tool takes in an abbreviated health history with physical data, family history and relevant cardiovascular data (it helps to know your last blood pressure and cholesterol values) and charts your current and projected risk profile for type-2 diabetes, heart attack and other diabetes related co-morbidities over the next 30 years. The analysis only takes a few minutes. Here’s me:

Now

Okay – that looks not-so-bad. But one of the cool things about the tool is that you can adjust some of the values (that is, what if I lost weight or lowered my blood pressure) and recalculate the projection and compare it to the original. With a few clicks I got rid of those 20 pounds I know I ought to lose and lowered my bp into a safer niche:

Thinner and not-stressy

Pretty cool. So if I do those things my prognosis shifts from a 1-in-6 chance of developing diabetes to a 1-in-8. I like those odds better.

The information here is all stuff we ought to have heard, but I think the graphical representation and seeing the prognosis change with variables might do a better job of getting the point across than a physician wagging their finger at you. Or maybe it's because I'm a scientist and like to see data.

I just hope it won’t take as long for me to get to a more-fit, less-stressed Steve as it did to get my PhD.

*By no means am I hating on graduate school – despite the veracity of the characterizations, I loved grad school.

She & Him

Jan 13, 2009
17 comments

In Neil Gaiman’s short story collection “Smoke and Mirrors” (which I recommend), there is a disturbing story called “Changes” set in a not-too-distant future where the jet-set drug of choice is one that can cause a person to change their gender. Despite dangerous side effects, the rich are illegally using it so they can bed whomever they want from whichever side of the plate they’d like. Hilarity ensues. Well, not really.

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions (P.S.)

Neil Gaiman

The reason this crossed my mind today was a report that I saw in the journal Endocrinology about a species of sex-changing gobies (fish). As it turns out, the goby species Trimma Okinawae is one of the few species that can change from male to female and back serially, depending on population and environmental conditions. The fish have both fully functioning ovaries and testes, and have the capacity to turn one “off” and the other “on” interchangeably – pretty funky.

Boy or girl

But then I started thinking about the gobies and about the story. And people. Of all the things about people (even more than skin color), gender has to be the first thing we notice and the one that makes the deepest impression. From the moment we’re conceived – XX or XY – it defines who we are. Even our language – he, she, him, her – is constructed around gender.

Is this something that you’d change if you could? Would you change your gender for a day in that “walk a mile in my shoes” sort of way? Just for the novelty? What if the change had to be longer – a year? Would you do it?

If it were possible, do you think it would be good for society? There’d certainly be no gender gap if gender was as easy to change as a hair-style. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin would have been merely candidates. The institution of marriage would almost certainly have had to be different. There would have been no reason for mad-cap shows like Bosom Buddies. How would Tom Hanks have become famous?

Personally, I sort of like things just the way they are – and I’m glad that such things remain in the realm of science fiction and obscure Pacific fish.

But maybe that’s just because I’m a man.

Book Meme on Steroids -- literally

Jan 16, 2008
9 comments

Got tagged by a few people on this, and while its probably more generally applicable to do this with the books I have at home, I thought it might be funny to execute this at work.

1. Grab your nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

5. Tag 5 different people.

Ok – the nearest books I have are my lab notebooks… but since they’re proprietary, I could get in fairly hot water posting that… so the next-closest book is:

Reproductive Endocrinolgy 4th ed. (1999) by Sam Yen, Bob Jaffe and Robert Barbieri

The classic steroidal hormones are estrogens, progesterone, androgens, glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids and vitamin D. These are important hormones that regulate the developmental and physiologic functions of female phenotype (estrogen), pregnancy (progesterone), male phenotype (androgen), metabolism and stress responses (glucocorticoids), salt and water balance (mineralocorticoids), and calcium metabolism and skeletal growth (vitamin D). To accomplish this task, the steroid hormones must bind to and activate a group of specific gene-regulatory molecules called receptors.

I'm not going to tag anyone in particular with this since I think its been going around for a little while, but please feel free to play along. Just remember, kids, don't do drugs.

Who Hearts Avandia?

Jul 30, 2007
14 comments

Well, I guess the FDA advisory panel does. Well, not exactly. They just don’t dislike it enough to pull it off the market.

Avandia

In a remarkable 22-1 decision, the advisory panel voted to allow Avandia (the multi-billion dollar drug from Glaxo for Type-II diabetes). I find this remarkable because I wasn’t sure the Agency had the cajones to stem a rapidly swelling tide against the drug.

Much hay was made in May when a NEJM article described a meta-analysis of thousands of patients and found an increase in myocardial ischemia (a loss of bloodflow usually caused by a blockage) which can offer be a pre-cursor to a heart-attack.

A meta-analysis is performed by combining results from several studies to form a database with a large number of patients. And that's the problem -- because the combined trials were all run differently, its really hard to extract statistically meaningful data – and so such analyses are used to guide specifically designed clinical trials that WILL yield statistically significant data – if there’s anything to find.

And here’s the kicker – Glaxo’s been DOING THAT TRIAL. They know they need this answer. The damn thing is Avandia has always had a “heart disease” issue, and is contra-indicated in people likely to have congestive heart failure. They think their compound is safe (enough) and that the trial will show it. But suddenly, there were ascending cries to remove the compound from the marketplace right now.

And I’m glad it wasn’t. The FDA can not let media feeding frenzies dictate the nation’s health policy.

That said – if I was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic, would I want to take Avandia? No. Not because of the heart risk (if its there), but because Avandia is hell on your liver, causes edema AND there are new medicines that take advantage of a different mechanism that has a good chance of being way better than Avandia. I would choose to take Amylin’s Byetta or Merck’s Januvia.

But that’s just me – if you’ve got questions, go talk to your doctor – better yet get your PCP to recommend an endocrinologist and get the real deal from someone that knows.

(end of rant -- back to travel and music and books and movies...)