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Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause
Background: Growth hormone levels often decline on aging, and this “somatopause” is associated with muscle and bone loss, visceral adiposity and impaired cardiovascular function. Mercury has been detected in human pituitary glands, so to see if mercury could play a part in the somatopause we measure...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6607410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31297094 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2019.00419 |
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author | Pamphlett, Roger Kum Jew, Stephen Doble, Philip A. Bishop, David P. |
author_facet | Pamphlett, Roger Kum Jew, Stephen Doble, Philip A. Bishop, David P. |
author_sort | Pamphlett, Roger |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background: Growth hormone levels often decline on aging, and this “somatopause” is associated with muscle and bone loss, visceral adiposity and impaired cardiovascular function. Mercury has been detected in human pituitary glands, so to see if mercury could play a part in the somatopause we measured the proportion of people at different ages who had mercury in their anterior pituitary cells. Materials and methods: Paraffin sections of pituitary glands taken at autopsy from 94 people between the ages of 2 and 99 years were stained for inorganic mercury using autometallography. Pituitary mercury content was classified as none, low (<30% of cells) or high (>30% of cells) in increasing two-decade age groups. Autometallography combined with immunohistochemistry determined which hormone-producing cells contained mercury. Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry was used to confirm the presence of mercury. Results: The proportion of people with low-content pituitary mercury remained between 33 and 42% at all ages. The proportion of people with high-content mercury increased with increasing age, from 0% of people in the 2–20 year group to a peak of 50% of people in the 61–80 years group, followed by a fall to 35% of people in the 81–99 years group. Mercury, when present, was found always in somatotrophs, occasionally in corticotrophs, rarely in thyrotrophs and gonadotrophs, and never in lactotrophs. Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry detected mercury in regions of pituitaries that stained with autometallography. Conclusions: The proportion of people with mercury in their anterior pituitary cells, mostly somatotrophs, increases with aging, suggesting that mercury toxicity could be one factor contributing to the decline in growth hormone levels found in advancing age. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6607410 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-66074102019-07-11 Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause Pamphlett, Roger Kum Jew, Stephen Doble, Philip A. Bishop, David P. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne) Endocrinology Background: Growth hormone levels often decline on aging, and this “somatopause” is associated with muscle and bone loss, visceral adiposity and impaired cardiovascular function. Mercury has been detected in human pituitary glands, so to see if mercury could play a part in the somatopause we measured the proportion of people at different ages who had mercury in their anterior pituitary cells. Materials and methods: Paraffin sections of pituitary glands taken at autopsy from 94 people between the ages of 2 and 99 years were stained for inorganic mercury using autometallography. Pituitary mercury content was classified as none, low (<30% of cells) or high (>30% of cells) in increasing two-decade age groups. Autometallography combined with immunohistochemistry determined which hormone-producing cells contained mercury. Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry was used to confirm the presence of mercury. Results: The proportion of people with low-content pituitary mercury remained between 33 and 42% at all ages. The proportion of people with high-content mercury increased with increasing age, from 0% of people in the 2–20 year group to a peak of 50% of people in the 61–80 years group, followed by a fall to 35% of people in the 81–99 years group. Mercury, when present, was found always in somatotrophs, occasionally in corticotrophs, rarely in thyrotrophs and gonadotrophs, and never in lactotrophs. Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry detected mercury in regions of pituitaries that stained with autometallography. Conclusions: The proportion of people with mercury in their anterior pituitary cells, mostly somatotrophs, increases with aging, suggesting that mercury toxicity could be one factor contributing to the decline in growth hormone levels found in advancing age. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-06-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6607410/ /pubmed/31297094 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2019.00419 Text en Copyright © 2019 Pamphlett, Kum Jew, Doble and Bishop. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Endocrinology Pamphlett, Roger Kum Jew, Stephen Doble, Philip A. Bishop, David P. Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause |
title | Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause |
title_full | Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause |
title_fullStr | Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause |
title_full_unstemmed | Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause |
title_short | Elemental Analysis of Aging Human Pituitary Glands Implicates Mercury as a Contributor to the Somatopause |
title_sort | elemental analysis of aging human pituitary glands implicates mercury as a contributor to the somatopause |
topic | Endocrinology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6607410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31297094 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2019.00419 |
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