Pharmacologic hemoglobin reversal: the importance of lipid intermediaries and the proposed involvement of the cAMP and phosphatidylinositol second messenger systems.
Humoral and microenvironmental influences have played a major role in recent research into reversing the Hb F to Hb A switch. Early research in this area focused on hormonal influences and showed both thyroid hormone and prolactin could induce small but statistically significant reversals in hemoglobin phenotype. Recent research has focused on the effect of certain lipids in this process. The current study shows a synergy between thyroid hormone and prolactin in inducing a significant switch in adult rat hemoglobin patterns toward the neonatal pattern. Further, it is hypothesized that this synergy is due to the hormones' effect on lipid intermediaries whose effect in turn are proposed to be mediated by the cAMP and phosphatidylinositol second messenger systems.