Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P01178 (oxytocin)
 15,767 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

This work was designed to study the impact of prenatal knowledge of fetal sex both on the psychological and obstetrical aspects of the expectant mothers during pregnancy and labour. One hundred pregnant women attending the outpatient antenatal clinic of Assiut University Hospital were recruited. All were in the third trimester, parous, with normal pregnancy and having no past or present psychiatric disorders. The desired sex of the expected child was registered. Symptom checklist 90 (SCL-90) was applied before, and 2 weeks after sonographic fetal sex determination. Women who desired male sex scored significantly higher depressive symptoms than those who desired female sex. Women who were proven sonographically to have the undesired fetal sex showed significantly higher scores of depression, somatization, anxiety, hostility and phobia scales of SCL-90 than women whose desired fetal sex was confirmed. The second part of the study to evaluate the effect of knowing the fetal sex on the progress of labour was designed as a case control study including 57 women previously informed about their fetal sex and 40 women ignorant of their fetal sex as controls. Women delivering a baby with undesired sex showed more obstetric difficulties. In the first stage of labour, they had significant reduction in frequency of uterine contractions and rate of cervical dilatation. They also needed much more sedation, analgesia and oxytocin augmentation.
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PMID:Psychological and obstetrical responses of mothers following antenatal fetal sex identification. 1006 13

Fear responses play evolutionarily beneficial roles, although excessive fear memory can induce inappropriate fear expression observed in posttraumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, and phobia. To understand the neural machineries that underlie these disorders, it is important to clarify the neural pathways of fear responses. Contextual conditioned fear induces freezing behavior and neuroendocrine responses. Considerable evidence indicates that the central amygdala plays an essential role in expression of freezing behavior after contextual conditioned fear. On the other hand, mechanisms of neuroendocrine responses remain to be clarified. The medial amygdala (MeA), which is activated after contextual conditioned fear, was lesioned bilaterally by infusion of N-methyl-d-aspartate after training of fear conditioning. Plasma oxytocin, ACTH, and prolactin concentrations were significantly increased after contextual conditioned fear in sham-lesioned rats. In MeA-lesioned rats, these neuroendocrine responses but not freezing behavior were significantly impaired compared with those in sham-lesioned rats. In contrast, the magnitudes of neuroendocrine responses after exposure to novel environmental stimuli were not significantly different in MeA-lesioned rats and sham-lesioned rats. Contextual conditioned fear activated prolactin-releasing peptide (PrRP)-synthesizing neurons in the medulla oblongata. In MeA-lesioned rats, the percentage of PrRP-synthesizing neurons activated after contextual conditioned fear was significantly decreased. Furthermore, neuroendocrine responses after contextual conditioned fear disappeared in PrRP-deficient mice. Our findings suggest that the MeA-medullary PrRP-synthesizing neuron pathway plays an important role in neuroendocrine responses to contextual conditioned fear.
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PMID:The medial amygdala-medullary PrRP-synthesizing neuron pathway mediates neuroendocrine responses to contextual conditioned fear in male rodents. 2487 22