an Endocrine Society Thematic Issue
Read our special collection of journal articles, published in 2019–2021, focused on biological rhythms! Curation of the collection was guided by Altmetric Attention Scores and Featured Article designations.
Recent years have seen a huge increase in research focusing on rhythms, which are typically driven by interlinked biological clocks. Because disruption of the clocks is linked to metabolic disease, increased understanding of clock function holds promise for better treatments.
In Endocrine Reviews, Lightman and coauthors describe how the pulsatile output of glucocorticoid hormones from the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis interacts with multiple regulatory systems, making them vulnerable to disruption but also opening up possibilities for chronotherapy. Kim and Lazar discuss the transcriptional architecture of the mammalian circadian clock and the therapeutic implications of its interactions with metabolism. Islam and colleagues describe progress in the development of selective progesterone receptor modulators that can alter the effects of oscillating progesterone levels to treat gynecologic and non-gynecologic conditions.
In Journal of the Endocrine Society, Lenert and coauthors describe findings in mice indicating that progesterone’s regulation of the estrus cycle is critical for metabolic homeostasis. Greendale and colleagues report that a late luteal rise in melatonin in humans may influence menstrual pacemaker control.
In Endocrinology, Chen and colleagues review the role of light and hormones in behavioral seasonality, with a focus on signaling pathways involved in a winter depression-like phenotype in medaka fish. Oosterman and associates discuss recent information about desynchronization between the circadian clock and specific organs caused by shift work or shifted eating times. Indications are that this could be related to organ-specific insulin resistance, and it suggests novel chronotherapeutic strategies. Heyde and colleagues consider how white and brown adipose tissue differentially contribute to the circadian regulation of metabolism, and Han and colleagues describe results from optogenetic experiments indicating that in male mice the gonadotropin-releasing hormone pulse generator is the primary determinant of the luteinizing hormone pulse profile.
JCEM has a pilot study by Swanson and colleagues showing that in women, sleep restriction accompanied by circadian disruption negatively affects bone metabolism, as previously reported for men. Gu and coauthors attracted great social media attention with their crossover study showing that eating a late dinner induces nocturnal glucose intolerance in healthy volunteers, an effect that could promote obesity. Zhai and coauthors provide results from in silico studies backed up by research on human tissues suggesting that the core clock gene PER2 is in the endometrium regulating genes that contribute to recurrent implantation failure.
Published: February 2021
It can be difficult to keep up to date in the rapidly evolving and expanding world of endocrine science. We curate topical collections of research from across our journals, Endocrine Reviews, Endocrinology, Journal of the Endocrine Society, and The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, so that you can easily find and read recent, influential articles on the topics that interest you.
Selection in each Thematic Issue is guided by online metrics, including Altmetric Attention Scores, Featured Article designations, and identification of leading authors and key topics. Each month, we publish a new Thematic Issue online and work to highlight and promote endocrine science in the press, through email, on social media and across other distribution channels.
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