Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:Q86TM3 (cage)
 29,987 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Various biochemical substances are being evaluated for use as serum tumor markers of adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. The currently established markers, CA 19-9 and POA, have an important but limited role in the diagnosis of pancreatic carcinoma. The role could be expanded if the specificity of these tests for pancreatic cancer could be increased, and this may be possible for each of these tests if several recent findings can be confirmed. Most of the new tumor markers are blood-group-related substances, in that the cancer-associated substances share epitopes that are similar to those of the Lewis blood group system. It seems likely that a "panel" of these markers could improve the specificity of these tests for pancreatic carcinoma. However, improvement of the clinical specificity appears unlikely since each of these markers has a high false-positive rate in patients with other cancers, liver diseases, and nonmalignant diseases of the pancreas. Additional study will be required to determine the optimal group of these tests to be used as a pancreatic cancer test panel. Also, more emphasis should be directed to the identification of tumor markers that can be used to detect pancreatic cancer at a stage when it can be treated effectively. The use of tumor markers for monitoring patients does not result in longer patient survival times or a higher survival rate because salvage therapies for this disease are ineffective. If effective salvage therapies can be developed, monitoring with serum tumor markers will become more significant. Thus, continued emphasis should be given to the development of serum tumor markers that have diagnostic utility.
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PMID:Serum tumor markers for pancreatic carcinoma. 210 May 61

At 21 days of age, gonadally intact male Long Evans rats were weaned and placed into standard laboratory conditions (three per cage) or housed singly. They were tested for noncontact erections and sexual performance at 90 and 220 days of age. Rats raised in isolation displayed significantly fewer noncontact erections in response to sensory cues from an estrous female and fewer intromissions when allowed to mate with a female than did males raised in groups. The volume of the posterodorsal component of the medial amygdala (MePD) and the size of neurons within the MePD were significantly smaller in the isolated males than in socially housed males. Similarly, neurons in the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN-POA) were smaller in isolate animals than in controls. As both MePD volume and SDN-POA soma size are responsive to sex steroids, these differences could result if the isolates experienced lower testosterone levels. Finally, the volume of the overall medial amygdala (MeA) correlated significantly with the number of noncontact erections, a relationship that was not explained by housing condition. These findings highlight the role of social experience as a factor in the sexual differentiation of the brain and suggest a positive relationship between the volume of a brain structure and the display of sexual behaviors.
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PMID:Post-weaning social isolation of male rats reduces the volume of the medial amygdala and leads to deficits in adult sexual behavior. 1109 63

Previous research showed that ferrets of both sexes rely on the perception of conspecifics' body odors to identify and motivate approach towards opposite-sex mating partners, and exposure to male body odors stimulated Fos expression in an olfactory projection circuit of female, but not male, ferrets that terminates in the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMH). We asked whether the female-typical preference of ferrets to approach male as opposed to female body odors in Y-maze tests would be disrupted by VMH lesions. Sexually experienced female ferrets were ovo-hysterectomized prior to receiving bilateral electrolytic lesions of the VMH, the preoptic area/anterior hypothalamus (POA/AH) or a sham operation. Subsequently, while receiving estradiol benzoate, females that received either complete or partial bilateral lesions of the VMH approached volatile odors from an anesthetized male on significantly fewer trials than females given POA/AH lesions or a sham operation. Both groups of ferrets with VMH lesion damage reliably discriminated between volatile anal scents as well as urinary odors from the 2 sexes in home cage habituation/dishabituation tests, suggesting that their odor-based sex discrimination remained intact. Females with complete bilateral VMH lesions showed significantly lower acceptance of neck gripping from a stimulus male (receptivity) and more aggression towards the male than all other groups of female subjects. Estrogen-sensitive neurons in the VMH appear to play a central role in female-typical neural processing of odor inputs leading to a preference to seek out a male sex partner, in addition to facilitating females' sexual receptivity.
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PMID:Ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus lesions disrupt olfactory mate recognition and receptivity in female ferrets. 1701 61

Conditioned same-sex partner preference can develop in male rats that undergo cohabitation under the effects of quinpirole (QNP, D2 agonist). Herein, we assessed the development of conditioned same-sex social/sexual preference in males that received either nothing, saline, QNP, oxytocin (OT), or QNP+OT during cohabitation with another male (+) or single-caged (-). This resulted in the following groups: (1) Intact-, (2) Saline+, (3) QNP-, (4) OT-, (5) QNP+, (6) OT+ and (7) QNP/OT+. Cohabitation occurred during 24h in a clean cage with a male partner that bore almond scent on the back as conditioned stimulus. This was repeated every 4 days for a total of three trials. Social and sexual preference were assessed four days after the last conditioning trial in a drug-free test in which experimental males chose between the scented familiar male and a novel sexually receptive female. Results showed that males from groups Intact-, Saline+, QNP- and OT- displayed a clear preference for the female (opposite-sex), whereas groups QNP+, OT+ and QNP/OT+ displayed socio/sexual preference for the male partner (same-sex). In Experiment 2, the brains were processed for Nissl dye and the area size of two sexually dimorphic nuclei (SDN-POA and SON) was compared between groups. Males from groups OT-, OT+ and QNP/OT+ expressed a smaller SDN-POA and groups QNP+ and QNP/OT+ expressed a larger SON. Accordingly, conditioned same-sex social/sexual partner preference can develop during cohabitation under enhanced D2 or OT activity but such preference does not depend on the area size of those sexually dimorphic nuclei.
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PMID:Conditioned same-sex partner preference in male rats is facilitated by oxytocin and dopamine: effect on sexually dimorphic brain nuclei. 2560 75