Over the past decades, an immense pandemic of obesity has been developing across the world, in part due to an overabundance of food that is available 24/7. While in ancient history a major need existed to store spare energy for times when food was scarce, the energy-conserving a…
Human adolescents exhibit higher levels of sensation seeking behaviour than younger or older individuals, and sensation seeking is higher in males than females from adolescence onwards. Data suggest that changes in gonadal hormone levels during adolescence and differences in the…
Semen quantity (volume) and quality (concentration, total number of sperm, percent of live sperm, total number of live sperm, and/or motility) were analyzed in male turkeys from 10 weeks of age to over one year of age in three experiments. The key variable in each of the three s…
Muslims fast one month each year during the month of Ramadan. Many studies have been conducted on fasting during the month of Ramadan; however, their results were varied. Furthermore, few studies have been conducted on hormones levels during Ramadan and these studies had vastly …
In gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates), pituitary glycoprotein hormones consist of the gonadotropins luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone (LH, FSH) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH). These glycoprotein hormones are heterodimers composed of a common α subunit in …
Introduction: The stress response is the complex physiological reaction that emerge in the face of a significant threat to bodily integrity or wellbeing. While the stress response is considered adaptive, over-activation of the stress response could be maladaptive and may lead to…
Physiology mediates how organisms interact with and are constrained by their environment. Understanding the variation in physiological responses to normal and extreme environmental conditions, particularly thermal variation, is critical for predicting how organisms will respond …
Theoretical and empirical work suggest that reactivity to stress and responsivity to reward are correlated domains of functioning, and that dysfunction in the stress and reward systems may underlie Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). The goals of the current study are to examine: (…
Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) is the study of trait evolution through variation in development. As early as the modern synthesis, it was recognized that to an understanding of the function of genes during development was critical to understanding evolution as a w…
Psychological research has demonstrated a wide variety of reactions to traumatic experiences and has sought theories for why some individuals experience negative, debilitating effects of traumatic exposure, and others develop posttraumatic growth. Further, prevalence rates of tr…
This study examines the relationship between puberty and mood in an epidemiological sample, describing trends in mood and quality of life (QoL) accompanying puberty, relationships between pubertal stage and mood diagnoses, and the effects of precocious puberty on mood. 1,163 car…
The desire to start a family is something millions of people around the globe strive to achieve. However, many factors such as the societal changes in family planning due to increasing maternal age, use of birth control, and ever-changing lifestyles have increased the number of …
Background: Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is characterized by a chronic inflammation withfibrosis and irreversible morphological changes that can result in permanent structuralchanges with a loss of exocrine and endocrine pancreas function. Exocrine dysfunction leadsto reduced produ…
Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a highly prevalent chronic disease and one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States (US) and in West Virginia (WV), a mostly rural Appalachian state. West Virginia has the highest prevalence of diabetes …
While major depression is a well-defined mental health condition, it's presentation can be vastly different across individuals and groups, and many factors impact one's vulnerability. A critical period of vulnerability to depression is the postpartum period. Despite the frequent…