[Structural characteristics of prolactin, growth hormone and their receptors as determinants of biological actions]. / Características estructurales de la prolactina, la hormona de crecimiento, y sus receptores como determinantes de la acción biológica.

The pituitary hormones prolactin and growth hormone are structurally related. Both hormones exist in the circulation in several molecular forms, differing in aminoacid sequences, posttranslational modifications and fragments produced by proteolytic cleavage. Heterogencity may produce a diversity of inmunological and biological actions. It has been suggested that each of this forms may be a isohormone with a different physiological role. The predominance of one of them in serun could account for the complex and often contradictory actions of the hormones. In addition receptors also have structural homology and so the possibility exist that these hormones share binding affinity to the receptors and can produce endocrinological problems in some special conditions.

Beyond familism?: Familism as explicit motive for eldercare among Mexican American caregivers.

This research explored eldercare among Mexican American primary family caregivers from Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. Although these caregivers expressed feelings of burden, their ethnocultural values of familism placed burden in a broader cultural context in which caregiving was also viewed as an affirmation and fulfillment of core Mexican American cultural values. Mexican American familism includes expressions of family solidarity, ethnocultural determinants of informal caregiving, distrust of culturally alien institutions (particularly nursing homes), and a desire to care for the elderly within the family context regardless of the personal cost or consequences. In contrast to recent research, these findings suggest that it is premature to dismiss familism as a continuing and central influence in the lives of Mexican American family caregivers.