Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0028754 (obesity)
 124,988 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

There are currently numerous well-woman clinics in Britain which emphasize a specific aspect of health care, including cervical cancer screening (134 centers), family planning (142 centers), antenatal care (162 clinics), and venereal disease control (15 clinics). However, care provided in these clinics is fragmentary and excludes certain population groups from coverage. For example, cervical cancer smears are largely sought by upper class women under age 35, although this cancer has a higher incidence among older women from the lower social classes. Similarly, family planning clinics are not attracting women at highest risk of repeat abortion. Antenatal clinics, although effective in reducing perinatal and maternal mortality, exclude women beyond the childbearing years. At present, there are less than 10 comprehensive well-woman clinics in Britain. However, an estimated 17 million women could benefit from such a service, especially if cervical cytology screening was absorbed within it. A comprehensive clinic could focus on medical problems common to women, including menopause, frigidity, child abuse, obesity, thyroid disease, and depression. Omissions created by fragmented care, such as failure to test for conditions like anemia, could be avoided. The Manchester well-woman clinic, set up in 1981, provides an example of the role such clinics could play. The clinic is targeted at women who rarely see a general practitioner, e.g., poor, infertile, older women. Its emphasis is on the prevention and early detection of disease. Treatment is limited to self-help support groups and discussions with staff; however, new attendees are screened by a physician and nurse. 99% of attendees were found to have at least 1 medical problem. 2/3 of these problems, including breast problems, vaginal discharge, menopause problems, depression, and headache, were not already being treated. This experience suggests that there is an untapped need for such a facility, especially among women between menopause and old age.
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PMID:Evaluating well-woman clinics. 688 41

A biographic and clinical investigation of 101 patients with hyperprolactinemia and/or galactorrhea is reported. Fifty-one patients were reared without their fathers and 18 with an alcoholic, violent one. These situations were uncommon in the control population, and the differences were statistically significant. There was a high frequency of complaints of obesity, headaches, frigidity, lightheadedness, and fullness of the abdomen, limbs, or face. There was a significant temporal correlation of external events in the natural history with onset or worsening of the symptoms. It is concluded that exposure during childhood to an environment characterized by an absent or alcoholic, violent father conditions some women to develop hyperprolactinemia and/or galactorrhea later in life as a response to specific environmental changes. These conclusions apply similarly to patients with prolactinoma, idiopathic hyperprolactinemia, and euprolactinemic galactorrhea, suggesting a close relationship among the 3 entities.
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PMID:Psychosomatic factors in patients with hyperprolactinemia and/or galactorrhea. 718 68

The melanocortins (alpha, beta and gamma-melanocyte-stimulating hormones: MSHs; adrenocorticotrophic hormone: ACTH), a family of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC)-derived peptides having in common the tetrapeptide sequence His-Phe-Arg-Trp, have progressively revealed an incredibly wide range of extra-hormonal effects, so to become one of the most promising source of innovative drugs for many, important and widespread pathological conditions. The discovery of their effects on some brain functions, independently made by William Ferrari and David De Wied about half a century ago, led to the formulation of the term "neuropeptide" at a time when no demonstration of the actual production of peptide molecules by neurons, in the brain, was still available, and there were no receptors characterized for these molecules. In the course of the subsequent decades it came out that melanocortins, besides inducing one of the most complex and bizarre behavioural syndromes (excessive grooming, crises of stretchings and yawnings, repeated episodes of spontaneous penile erection and ejaculation, increased sexual receptivity), play a key role in functions of fundamental physiological importance as well as impressive therapeutic effects in different pathological conditions. If serendipity had been an important determinant in the discovery of the above-mentioned first-noticed extra-hormonal effects of melanocortins, many of the subsequent discoveries in the pharmacology of these peptides (feeding inhibition, shock reversal, role in opiate tolerance/withdrawal, etc.) have been the result of a planned research, aimed at testing the "pro-nociceptive/anti-nociceptive homeostatic system" hypothesis. The discovery of melanocortin receptors, and the ensuing synthesis of selective ligands with agonist or antagonist activity, is generating completely innovative drugs for the treatment of a potentially very long list of important and widespread pathological conditions: sexual impotence, frigidity, overweight/obesity, anorexia, cachexia, haemorrhagic shock, other forms of shock, myocardial infarction, ischemia/reperfusion-induced brain damage, neuropathic pain, rheumathoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, nerve injury, toxic neuropathies, diabetic neuropathy, etc. This review recalls the history of these researches and outlines the pharmacology of the extra-hormonal effects of melanocortins which are produced by an action at the brain level (or mainly at the brain level). In our opinion the picture is still incomplete, in spite of being already so incredibly vast and complex. So, for example, several of their effects and preliminary animal data suggest that melanocortins might be of concrete effectiveness in one of the areas of most increasing concern, i.e., that of neurodegenerative diseases.
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PMID:Brain effects of melanocortins. 1899 99