ENDOCRINOLOGY WK 4 Flashcards
what hormonal systems and hormones are involved in obesity
Regulation of body weight – Hypothalamus
- Efferents Controlling body weight ‘the well-connected hypothalamus’
o Satiety (default is to eat) o Pituitary Gonads – sex steroids Adrenal cortex – cortisol Thryoid – thyroxine Growth hormones
o ANS
PNS – pancreatic B cells – insulin
Sympathetic – adrenal medulla – adrenaline
what afferent signals tell us when to stop eating
- Insulin
- Gastric distention in small bowel (Ghrelin, PYY, GLP1 etc)
- Hormones from fat tissue (Leptin and TNFa)
- Conscious control – willpower
- Substrate supply protein = CHO>Fat
leptin role and as treatment
- Thought that it could turn off appetite in the past
- Leptin concentrations in blood corresponds with obesity (adiposity)
Leptin treatment for obesity
- Ineffective when (leptin) is high – idiopathic obesity
- Effective when leptin is low
o Leptin deficiency rare
o Anorexia nervosa
o Lipodystrophy
- However doesn’t work on normal obese people as they have ‘ leptin resistance’
actions of leptin
- Satiety
- HPG axis is downregulated – stops…
o Puberty
o Fertility - HPA axis downregulated
- HPT axis downregulated
- Peripheral actions??
o Adipocytes, pancreatic islets, immune cells…
PROBABLY MOST IMPORTANT IN LOW ENERGY STATES AS SURVIVAL SIGNAL
what are causes of secondary obesity
- Hypothyroidism
- Cushing’s syndrome – usually iatrogenic
- Hypothalamic disease
- Others
o Drugs (lestrogen, beta blockers, tricyclic antidepressants, sodium valproate)
o Insulinoma, GH deficiency
o Genetic disorders eg Prader Willi syndrome, leptin deficiency etc etc
spotting endocrine disorders in obese patients
History - Always obese/ age of onset - Periods irregular/ headache/ thirst, polyuria - Diet, eating patern, alcohol, exercise - Drugs - Complications and effects on lifestyle Examination - Features of cushing’s, hypothyroidism, hypothalamic disease, syndromes - BP Investigations - TFTs - Blood glucose
how is obesity and diabetes linked
- If you are genetically suscpetible and put on weight = resistant to insulin
- Need to make a lot more insulin to stop you from becoming diabetic
- Puts a strain on the pancreas B cells
- B cells become tired and start turning off/ dying
- Once you’ve lost ~60% of B cells you develo diabetes
fat distribution - apple vs pear
Apples - Androgens - Glucocorticoid o Central o Visceral o Android - High risk Pears - Oestrogens o Peripheral o Subcutaneous o Gynoid - Low risk
why does central obesity lead to insulin resistance?
- Fat in the belly is broken down and free fatty acids are poured straight to the liver
o Turned into lipoproteins
o Secreted into harmful pattern of lipids
why is fat essential for health?
Fat tissue is essential for health!!
- Able to comfortably store demands in a safe place til it’s needed
1- Free fatty acids excess to energy requirements
2- Adipose tissue triglyceride storage capacity
3- Extra-adipose fat stores
what happens if you’re potential to expand adipose tissue is low
Some people have more potential to expand adipose tissue than others
- If you cannot expand you adipose tissue and it’s stored in small amount in your waist this is bad and can lead to daibetes
adipokines - what secretes them, how do they relate to diabetes
- Secreted from adipocytes or macrophages in adipose tissue
- Manipulation in mice demonstrate potent effects on insulin sensitivity in other tissues
- Correlated with insulin sensitivity in other tissues in humans
- Many candidates published – variabel importance
adipose tissue - endocrine effects
Fat tissue can take different steroid hormones and converts them to other steroid hormones to activate/ deactivate them
- Probs why fat tissue inc. risk of breast cancer
- As it can take androgens (male type hormones from adrenal gland) and converts to oestradiol
- In post menopausal women adipose tissue is a signif. Contributer to circulating amounts of oestrogen – promotes breast cancer
what are the endocrine consequences of obesity
Altered steroid metabolism in adipose tissue
- Increased oestrone and oestradiol
o Hirsutism and infertility
o Hormone-sensitive cancers
- Increased reactivation of cortisol from cortisone
Altered substrate flux and adipose inflammation - Insulin resistance o Hyperglycaemia o Dyslipidaemia, fatty lover o Subfertility
Altered hypothalamic function
- Anovulatory menstrual cycles
o Subfertility
strategies for manipulating body weight
- New drugs targeting appetite control/ satiety centres in CNS
- Altering adipocyte metabolsim
o Turning on fat burning by activating brown/beige fat - Bariatric surgery
o Medically mimicking surgery (eg combination hormones)
o Gut microbiota - Public health measures
o Education/ laws/ town planning
insulin - where is it secreted, what kind of hormone is it, what does it do
- Hormone secreted in pancreas (islets)
- Anabolic hormone
- Essential for fuel storage and cell growth
- Promotes uptake of glucose into cells for energy
- Prevents breakdown of fat and protein
whats the structure of pancreatic islets
- Beta cell are most prominent = manufacture insulin
- Alpha cells manufacture glucagon
- Delta cells = make somatostatin
- F cell = make oancreatic polypeptide
Through the islets there are capillaries for hormones to drain into
somatostatin - role, therapeutic uses
- An inhibitory hormone which switches off production of other hormoens
- And so is used therapeutically to treat hormone syndromes (making too much of hormone) eg acromegaly, neuroendocrine tumours
what does a tumour of islets lead to
If you have tumour of islets that makes lots of pancreatic polypeptide = lots of diarhhoea
structure of insulin
Alpha subunit and beta subunit that are linked via disulphide bonds by c-peptide
- Prior to release of insulin free c-peptide is cleaved away by B-cell peptidases
- Converting pro-insulin to insulin
explain the process of coupled insulin secretion and glucose influx
GLUT2 allows to go from interstitium into the B-cells without insulin (aka insulin indpendant)
- It’s concentration dependant so more glucose in interstitium the more in the B-cells
- Glucose is processed in the mitochondria to produce ATP
ATP dependant K Channel
- When open allows K from cell to pass out into intersttitium along the conc. Gradient
- ATP closes the channel
- Which allows the conc. Of K in the cells to rise
- Which results in membrane depolarisation
- Which in turn closes a voltage gated calcium channel
- This will affect the levels of Ca in cells leading to exocytosis and release of insulin into the blood
So release of insulin is dependant on influx of glucose into the cell
- Due to production of ATP
secretion of insulin - when and how
- Biggest surges of insulin occur immediately after geating food as glucose levels rise most in this time
- In response to eating food insulin secreted in dual phase…
1- Intial spike occurs quickly, through the release of insulin that’s already manufactured in beta cells in secretory granules
2- Granules become depleted and beta cells make new insulin to augment insulin repsose (2nd phase)
c-peptide as a clinical marker
insulin secretion in people with diabetes
- Because diabetics inject insulin which does not contain c-peptide and so this doesn’t change endogenous amounts
insulin - secretion pathway and sites of action
Insulin from pancreas
- Secreted into portal vein (in high concentrations in portal circulation > systemic)
o Important bc/ giving exogenous insulin this goes into systemic circulation
o In order to get physiological levles into portal circulation you must give supra-physiological amounts into systemic circulation
- Acts first on LIVER
- Passes through liver into systemic circulation (through hepatic vein)
- Acts on MUSCLE (skeletal) and FAT (adipose)