2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Neural mechanisms of gonadal steroid hormone effectsin circadian rhythmicity
| Project/Area Number |
22890173
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Environmental physiology (including Physical medicine and Nutritional physiology)
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| Research Institution | Teikyo Heisei University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2010 – 2011
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| Keywords | 生物時計 / 生殖生理学 / 睡眠・覚醒 / 時計遺伝子 / 神経回路 |
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| Research Abstract |
Women suffer from a range of sleep disorders with insomnia and hypersomnia being particularly common. In many cases, these sleep disorders are tightly associated with endocrine changes including menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. It has been long speculated that variations of gonadalsteroid hormone levels that occur during this times are closely related to these sleep-wake disturbances. Our goalisto determine the neural mechanisms that underlie gonadal steroids, especially, estrogen driven changes in the circadian timing system. In this study, we tried to identify estrogen sensitive oscillator(s) which estrogen directly influences and lead to change circadian behavioral rhythm in female rodents. We examined rhythms of clock gene expression(PER2) in several target regions in the brainusing immunohistochemistry(in vivo) and luminescent recording methods to measure circadian rhythms of PER2 expression in tissue explant cultures from cycling PER2 :: LUCIFERASE(PER2 :: LUC) knockin mice(in vitro). We found that PER2 :: LUC rhythm in preoptic area(POA) of the hypothalamus was directly influenced by estrogen treatments. Ultimately, our findings will result in new therapeutic approaches for sleep disorders in women and improve the quality of life for women throughout their lifecycle.
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