Fig. (1).

CRH downregulates leptin production by human adipocytes. Upper panel: Primary cultures of preadipocytes and mature adipocytes were developed as described [116] from subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue of 7 healthy children and adolescents. Lower panel: Equal amount of cells (10,000) from each culture at passage 1, were transferred in 24-well plates and cultured in doublicate with recombinant CRH at concentrations 10^-9M or 10^-6M, during a period of 21 days. Culture supernatants were collected from preadipocyte and mature adipocyte cultures at base line (no CRH added) and at days 7, 14 and 21 of culture. In each sample leptin levels were measured by ELISA. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, Student’s t-test [this work].