The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and sex hormones in chronic stress and obesity: pathophysiological and clinical aspects

Pasquali (2012) writes that obesity is believed to develop as a result of people’s inability to adapt to chronic environmental stress exposure that is mediated by a dysregulation of related neuroendocrine axes. One axis that plays a major role in this context is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. But the author reports that a person’s sex also affects their ability to adapt to chronic stress. This is highlighted as stress-related chronic diseases develop following certain pathophysiological events. The regulatory impacts of sex hormones are thought to play a role in this development. The stress experienced may alter feeding as well, with variation according to sex again. Carrying out experimental studies on humans and animals can increase the understanding of the specific phenotypes of obesity that are connected to the chronic exposure to stress. Doing so can potentially sprout novel ideas and treatments for obesity. [NPID: stress, obesity, adaptation, stress exposure, HPA axis]

Year: 2012

Reference: Pasquali R. (2012). The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and sex hormones in chronic stress and obesity: pathophysiological and clinical aspects. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1264(1), 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2012.06569.x

Related Studies

Berry consumption in relation to allostatic load in US adults: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2003-2010

Berries are a great way to get antioxidant polyphenols and other health-promoting elements. Allostatic load (AL) is a term that refers to the total amount of physiological dysregulations caused by chronic stress in the autonomic, cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems. Integrated biomarkers can assess a combined or domain score representing the degree of these dysregulations […]

Early hippocampal volume loss as a marker of eventual memory deficits caused by repeated stress

Although the hippocampus becomes damaged by exposure to severe and prolonged stress, Rahman et al. (2016) comment that research is lacking on how the hippocampal structure changes after repeatedly experiencing stress, and what sort of behaviors are affected by these alterations. Analyses of behaviors appeared to show that spatial memory becomes impaired over the 10 […]