Acute psychological stress raises plasma ghrelin in the rat

β1-Adrenergic receptor deficiency in ghrelin-expressing cells causes hypoglycemia in susceptible individuals

“…jci.org Volume 126 Number 9 September 2016 in future studies of other important β 1 AR-mediated processes, such as cardiac function, smooth muscle tone, the hypoglycemia counterregulatory response, and adipose tissue physiology. Also, given our findings in calorie-restricted GC-β 1 AR -/-mice, we would predict that other conditions associated with enhanced sympathetic drive, such as psychosocial stress and cold exposure -both of which have been shown to be associated with increased plasma ghrelin levels -may involve robust β 1 AR-dependent ghrelin secretion responses (50,(84)(85)(86)(87) on which the full physiological responses to those conditions may depend. Furthermore, the occurrence of hypoglycemia in calorie-restricted GC-β 1 AR -/-mice and the prevention thereof by ghrelin administration suggest that closer blood glucose monitoring might be prudent in cachectic individuals if beta blocker therapy becomes indicated, just as has already been recommended for children with infantile hemangioma treated with propranolol, for whom we now propose that reduced ghrelin secretion contributes to the beta blocker-associated hypoglycemia.…”

Safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of intravenous ghrelin for cancer-related anorexia/cachexia: a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, double-crossover study

“…Drugs for symptom control (eg, haloperidol (Jaszberenyi et al, 2006), 5-HT-3 antagonist ) may interact with ghrelin metabolism. Patients often have enhanced levels of proinflammatory cytokines and stress, which are reported to increase preprandial activation of ghrelin secretion (Kristenssson et al, 2006) by activation of sympathetic nerves but not by epinephrine (Mundinger et al, 2006). Alterations in testosterone End-of-study Ghrelin (total) (pg ml (1230)); Ia-Va, blood samples week 2; EOS, end of study.…”

“…The safety and tolerability data support further exploration of the therapeutic potential of natural ghrelin, namely escalation of dose and frequency and chronic administration. The patient population may be stratified for baseline ghrelin levels (Garcia et al, 2005;Wolf et al, 2006), and other factors need to be controlled for, namely genetic alterations of the ghrelin gene (Holst and Schwartz, 2006), cytokine levels (Dixit et al, 2004), stress level (Kristenssson et al, 2006), hypogonadism (Strasser et al, 2006), patients' eating preferences (Blom et al, 2006), baseline food intake (Gilg and Lutz, 2006), and gastric emptying (Binn et al, 2006). These strategies may counteract the series of many negative cachexia phase III trials (EPA, cannabinoids) or single not confirmed studies (ATP, thalidomide), treating uniformly all patients having loss of weight and appetite, despite promising pathophysiological concepts.…”

Effects of Toxoplasma gondii infection on anxiety, depression and ghrelin level in male rats

“…Rises in ghrelin as an appetite-stimulating hormone occur not only in response to states of energy insufficiency but also following stress (Kristenssson et al 2006). It has been shown that ghrelin has anxiolytic and antidepressant effects.…”