Summary
Patients with primary hyperthyroidism treated to attain normal serum concentrations of thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3), show a bimodal distribution of pituitary thyrotropic responsiveness to exogenous protirelin (TRH). To the contrary, the hormonal constellation of primary hypothyroidism produces a unimodal distribution. THOM’s catastrophe theory is applied to formulate a qualitative, macroscopic model of the thyrotropic responsiveness. The adapted cusp catastrophe demonstrates how the inhibition by T4 and T3 and the stimulation by TRH cooperate on the thyrotropic function. Moreover, a microscopic, stochastic model of a stimulus-secretion coupling system of pituitary thyrotropic cells is constructed to end up with a probability potential associated with a cusp catastrophe. Comparison of the macroscopic with the microscopic model shows that a reversible allosteric transition is an essential feature of the system.
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Seif, F.J. (1979). Cusp Bifurcation in Pituitary Thyrotropin Secretion. In: Güttinger, W., Eikemeier, H. (eds) Structural Stability in Physics. Springer Series in Synergetics, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67363-4_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67363-4_25
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