Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disorder, affecting between 4% and 8% of reproductive aged women. This syndrome, a complex disorder with multiple components, including reproductive, metabolic, and cardiovascular manifestations, has long-term health concerns that cross the life span. The diagnostic criteria for PCOS are ovarian dysfunction evidenced by oligomenorrhea or amenorrhea and clinical evidence of androgen excess (e.g., hirsutism and acne) in the absence of other conditions that can cause these same symptoms. This article reviews current knowledge about the pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, and management of this disorder.

The benefits of breastfeeding for both the infant and the mother are undisputed. Longer intervals between births decrease fetal/infant and maternal complications. Lactation is an effective contraceptive for the first 6 months postpartum only if women breastfeed exclusively and at regular intervals, including nighttime. Because a high percentage of women in the United States supplement breastfeeding, it is important for these women to choose a method of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies. Both the method of contraception and the timing of the initiation of contraceptives are important decisions that a clinician must help the breastfeeding woman make. Ideally, the chosen method of contraception should not interfere with lactation. This article reviews the research on the effect of contraceptives, including hormonal contraceptives, on lactation.

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KING, JOYCE L, MARIO DIGIROLAMO. Lactate production from glucose and response to insulin in perifused adipocytes from mesenteric and epididymal regions of lean and obese rats. Obes Res. 1998;6:69-75. Lactate, an important metabolic substrate for peripheral tissues and the liver, is released in significant amounts from adipose tissue. Using a perifusion system, we measured lactate production from glucose and response to insulin in isolated mesenteric and epididymal adipocytes removed from fed or fasted male Wistar rats at two stages of growth and development: (a) lean rats (7 weeks to 9 weeks old, weighing -250 g), and (b) fatter rats (6 months to 8 months old, weighing -550 8). The results show that lactate production in perifused adipocytes is regulated by the prior nutritional state of the animals, by the adipose tissue region, and by the presence of insulin in the perifusate. In fat cells from lean rats, basal lactate production was significantly higher (Pc0.05) in mesenteric cells when compared with epididymal cells, both in the fed state (7.8 nmoY107 fat cells per minute vs. 2.9 nm0YlO' fat cells per minute) and after 2 days of fasting (13.6 nmol vs. 3.5 nmol). When the response to 1 mU/mL insulin was studied, however, the relative increase in lactate production produced by insulin was greater in the epididymal cells than in the mesenteric cells, in both the fed (194% vs. 91% over basal, respectively) and fasted (360% vs. 55% over basal, p<0.05) state. When larger epididymal adipocytes

In working and practical contexts, dogs rely upon their ability to discriminate a target odor from distracting odors and other sensory stimuli. Using awake fMRI in 18 dogs, we examined the neural mechanisms underlying odor discrimination between two odors and a mixture of the odors. Neural activation was measured during the presentation of a target odor (A) associated with a food reward, a distractor odor (B) associated with nothing, and a mixture of the two odors (A+B). Changes in neural activation during the presentations of the odor stimuli in individual dogs were measured over time within three regions known to be involved with odor processing: the caudate nucleus, the amygdala, and the olfactory bulbs. Average activation within the amygdala showed that dogs maximally differentiated between odor stimuli based on the stimulus-reward associations by the first run, while activation to the mixture (A+B) was most similar to the no-reward (B) stimulus. To clarify the neural representation of odor mixtures in the dog brain, we used a random forest classifier to compare multilabel (elemental) vs. multiclass (configural) models. The multiclass model performed much better than the multilabel (weighted-F1 0.44 vs. 0.14), suggesting the odor mixture was processed configurally. Analysis of the subset of high-performing dogs’ brain classification metrics revealed a network of olfactory information-carrying brain regions that included the amygdala, piriform cortex, and posterior cingulate. These results add further evidence for the configural processing of odor mixtures in dogs and suggest a novel way to identify high-performers based on brain classification metrics.