Journal: Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2009 Oct;1179(1Glucocorticoids and Mood
Clinical Manifestations, Risk Factors, and Molecular Mechanisms):153-166.
Authors: Chrousos GP, Kino T.
Affiliation: First Department of Pediatrics, Athens University
Medical School, Athens, Greece.
NLM Citation: PMID: 19906238
Glucocorticoids contribute to the maintenance of basal and
stress-related homeostasis in all higher organisms, and influence a
large proportion of the expressed human genome, and their effects
spare almost no organs or tissues. Glucocorticoids regulate many
functions of the central nervous system, such as arousal, cognition,
mood, sleep, the activity and direction of intermediary metabolism,
the maintenance of a proper cardiovascular tone, the activity and
quality of the immune and inflammatory reaction, including the
manifestations of the sickness syndrome, and growth and reproduction.
The numerous actions of glucocorticoids are mediated by a set of at
least 16 glucocorticoid receptor (GR) isoforms forming homo- or
hetero-dimers. The GRs consist of multifunctional domain proteins
operating as ligand-dependent transcription factors that interact
with many other cell signaling systems, including large and small G
proteins. The presence of multiple GR monomers and homo- or
hetero-dimers expressed in a cell-specific fashion at different
quantities with quantitatively and qualitatively different
transcriptional activities suggest that the glucocorticoid signaling
system is highly stochastic.
Glucocorticoids are heavily involved in human pathophysiology and
influence life expectancy. Common behavioral and/or somatic complex
disorders, such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic pain and
fatigue syndromes, obesity, the metabolic syndrome, essential
hypertension, diabetes type 2, atherosclerosis with its
cardiovascular sequelae, and osteoporosis, as well as autoimmune
inflammatory and allergic disorders, all appear to have a
glucocorticoid-regulated component.
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