Health

Calcium intake and absorption: Are you getting enough?

Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the body. About 1% of the body's calcium is used for metabolic functions, such as vascular contraction and dilation, muscle function, blood clotting, heart rhythm, nerve transmission, ...

Medications

Steroid drugs used for HRT can combat E. coli and MRSA

The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria is a global threat to human health, and the development of new antibiotics from scratch is an extremely expensive and time-consuming process. To address this urgent issue, researchers ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Sex hormones could be key to treating long COVID

Among the many mysteries about long COVID, one of the most vexing has been why women seem to experience the condition more often and more severely than men. Now, scientists are starting to think hormones—and the different ...

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Hormone

Hormones (from Greek ὁρμή - "impetus") are chemicals released by cells that affect cells in other parts of the body. Only a small amount of hormone is required to alter cell metabolism. It is essentially a chemical messenger that transports a signal from one cell to another. All multicellular organisms produce hormones; plant hormones are also called phytohormones. Hormones in animals are often transported in the blood. Cells respond to a hormone when they express a specific receptor for that hormone. The hormone binds to the receptor protein, resulting in the activation of a signal transduction mechanism that ultimately leads to cell type-specific responses.

Endocrine hormone molecules are secreted (released) directly into the bloodstream, while exocrine hormones (or ectohormones) are secreted directly into a duct, and from the duct they either flow into the bloodstream or they flow from cell to cell by diffusion in a process known as paracrine signalling.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA