Associated with the Endocrine System

Human diseases related to endocrine dysfunction can be broadly grouped into (1) overproduction of a particular hormone, (2) underproduction of a hormone, and (3) target-cell insensitivity to a hormone. 

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Hormones Are Organized into a Hierarchy Diseases Associated with the Endocrine System... 

There are a number of disease states that are associated with the endocrine system. For example, hormones may be released in amounts that are too great or too small for the body to work normally. This situation is often referred to as hormone imbalance however, other problems are associated with the endocrine system. Typical diseases associated with the endocrine system include hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, diabetes and osteoporosis. Additionally, in this chapter we will consider drags that ad on the endocrine system or drags that are associated with problems related to this system. Details of drags that are employed in the conuol of various aspects relating to the endocrine S5 tem will also be detailed. For instance, the utilisation of synthetic sex hormones for birth control will be dealt with. 

Reports of the effects of Li+ upon the thyroid gland and its associated hormones are the most abundant of those concerned with the endocrine system. Li+ inhibits thyroid hormone release, leading to reduced levels of circulating hormone, in both psychiatric patients and healthy controls [178]. In consequence of this, a negative feedback mechanism increases the production of pituitary TSH. Li+ also causes an increase in hypothalamic thyroid-releasing hormone (TRH), probably by inhibiting its re-... 

The endocrine system is composed of hormone-producing organs within the body. Probably the most important endocrine organ is the pituitary gland, located at the base of the skull and intimately associated with the hypothalamus, both the pituitary and the hypothalamus secrete a wide variety of peptidic hormones and are crucial to the... 

Toxicity Ethylamine causes severe irritancy to exposed skin, eyes, and mucous membranes. Direct contact with the skin of experimental animals resulted in skin bums, scarring, and necrosis.37-39 The chemical also caused adverse effects and degenerative changes in heart, liver, lung, kidney, and associated injury to the endocrine system of animals.40... 

Effects have also been observed on the environment. Rachel Carson s Silent Spring in the 1960s drew attention to effects on wildlife. Our Stolen Future (Colbom et al. 1996) created an interest in disruption of the endocrine system by chemicals, even in animals. Many cases of effects on natural animal populations can now be inferred from laboratory experiments, although confirmation in the environment is extremely difficult. For instance, organochlorinc concentrations in adult male bottlenose dolphins are approaching the levels associated with adverse effects found in marine mammals (Carballo et al. 2008), and exposures of tadpoles to a mixture of nine pesticides at environmentally occurring levels lead to developmental effects in most frogs, while none were observed when the pesticides were applied one at a time (Hayes et al. 2006). 

Another consequence of the interdependent nature of the endocrine system is that manifestation of an endocrine disorder is virtually always associated with changes in synthesis or concentration of multiple hormones. For example, in 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD)-treated rats, the decrease in thyroid... 

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