Gender hormones may lend to social disorder therapies


Gender hormones may lend to social disorder therapies
By WTN News • 08/24/05
Madison, Wis.

-- Gender
politics aside, every biologist
knows that men and women truly are different.
Social disorders such as autism constitute one area where those
differences come to the fore: around 80 percent of all autism
cases, for example, occur in men. Social play behaviors also differ
greatly between the sexes - just about everyone agrees that young
boys play "rougher" than girls.
Early in human development, critical brain
proteins known as steroid receptors
lay most of the groundwork for ensuing sexual destinies.

The
receptors bind to hormones such as testosterone and estrogen and
set in motion gender blueprints for a lifetime.
To understand
why autistic children have
trouble engaging in social interactions, researchers have long
observed "rough-and-tumble" play - the propensity to bite,
wrestle or pounce - in juvenile rats. Scientists were convinced
that testosterone solely dictated the onset of such
behavior.
But researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now
made the surprising finding that estrogen-and even dopamine, a
neurotransmitter-also play critical roles.

The work, which appeared
online Aug. 16 in the journal Endocrinology, can one day
help to diagnose new autism cases and can potentially pave the way
for new hormone-based therapeutic approaches that counteract the
social difficulties of autism, says senior author Anthony Auger, an
assistant professor of psychology.
"Our work points out an overlooked mechanism that controls
social play behavior," says Auger. "Now if we work to understand
how these biological mechanisms control social behavior, we can
discern which points of the various pathways are involved in the
disruption of social interactions.

"
Male rats are likely to engage in rough-and-tumble play almost
13 times as frequently as females, says Auger. But when the
UW-Madison team treated newborn females with estrogen, they bit,
boxed, pinned and pounced as frequently as the males after reaching
juvenile age. The estrogen effectively "masculinized" the females,
Auger says.
To the scientists' surprise, a similar result took place when
they treated the females with a mimic of the neurotransmitter
dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain that regulates emotions
and feelings of pleasure.


The UW-Madison study results imply that many factors, beyond
steroid receptors and sex hormones, may be interrupted during the
onset of social disorders, Auger says. Consequently, he hopes to
focus on the potential role of another group of
proteins - known as growth factors
- in social play behaviors.
Other scientists who participated in the study include
UW-Madison doctoral student and lead author Kristin Olesen,
zoologist Catherine Auger and research specialist Heather
Jessen.

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