This study is the first description of exaggerated GH response to the administration of GHRH in HA men and also of a significant increase in IGF-I concentration in the same subjects in the presence of normal levels of IGFBP-3. An altered hypothalamic-pituitary response was found in HA men after administration of oCRH characterized by a significantly lower basal ACTH concentration at HA, although the response to oCRH was present but the beta-endorphin response to oCRH was blunted. At HA, basal cortisol levels, as well as CBG, were elevated and the cortisol levels did not significantly increase after endogenous ACTH secretion. We have characterized the differences in hypothalamic-pituitary dynamics after the administration of TRH, GnRH and oCRH in HA men comparing their response to age/sex matched SL men.

No abstract

The study's objective was to develop and validate the psychometric properties of two brief pictorial scales to evaluate the roles of bystanders and victims of bullying. A sample of 910 students was considered (49.6%, boys; 50.4%, girls) between the ages of 7 and 13 (M = 10, SD = 1.4). Both instruments present nine pictorial items representing two dimensions: physical bullying (items 1 to 4) and psychological bullying (items 5 to 9). An additional measure of anxiety was used to assess convergent validity. The Confirmatory Factorial Analysis shows that the two-dimensional oblique model, physical bullying and psychological bullying, presents a better fit to the bystander scale data (RMSEA = .040; CFI = .984; SRMR = .033) and in the victim scale (RMSEA = .051; CFI = .978; SRMR = .040) in comparison to other competitor models. From the perspective of the Item Response Theory (IRT), it was found that the items adequately discriminate the levels of the latent variable; therefore, items 1 (physical bullying) and 7 (psychological bullying) are the most accurate on the bystander scale, and items 3 (physical bullying) and 7 (psychological bullying), on the victim scale. It was also found that the degree of difficulty on both scales is lower for the psychological bullying dimension than for the physical bullying dimension. Both instruments demonstrated good psychometric properties; therefore, they can detect school bullying in classrooms.