Hormone Research: Somatostatin

Somatostatin

Somatostatin is also recognized as growth hormone-inhibiting hormone or somatotropin release-inhibiting hormone. Despite the different titles, somatostatin is a peptide hormone that controls the endocrine system and affects neurotransmission and the spreading of cells with somatostatin receptors and inhibition of the many secondary hormones. Somatostatin is categorized as an inhibitory hormone, whose actions are spread to various parts of the body such as the anterior pituitary gland and the gastrointestinal system. Somatostatin is produced by neuroendocrine neurons of the hypothalamus and these neurons arranges to the median eminence where somatostatin is released into the hypothalamo-hypophysial system. It is then carried to the anterior pituitary gland, where it inhibits the secretion of growth hormone. Somatostatin has two active forms, one of fourteen amino acids and the other of twenty-eight amino acids. Humans only have one somatostatin gene (SST) while vertebrates (animal with backbone) have six different somatostatin genes (SS1-6). Somatostatin secretes in numerous locations in different organs of the body. In the digestive system, it secretes in the stomach, intestine, and the delta cells of the pancreas. 

Video:

References: http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/otherendo/somatostatin.html

http://www.yourhormones.info/hormones/somatostatin.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artQTDaWXQ8