Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Oct 15, 2021; 12(10): 1622-1654
Published online Oct 15, 2021. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v12.i10.1622
Estrogens and the regulation of glucose metabolism
Marià Alemany
Marià Alemany, Faculty of Biology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona 08028, Catalonia, Spain
Author contributions: Alemany M is the only author.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The Author declares no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Marià Alemany, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Biology, University of Barcelona, Av. Diagonal, 643, Barcelona 08028, Catalonia, Spain. malemany@ub.edu
Received: January 22, 2021
Peer-review started: January 22, 2021
First decision: March 1, 2021
Revised: March 10, 2021
Accepted: April 14, 2021
Article in press: April 14, 2021
Published online: October 15, 2021
Core Tip

Core Tip: Estrogens play a paramount and continued regulatory role, based on the synergy between the different forms of estrogen to maintain energy (and lipid/glucose) homeostasis. These functions include preventing: oxidative damage, lipid-induced inflammation, excess fat accrual and the complications of excess amino nitrogen. This short incomplete list is fairly close to a recipe for preventing the development of metabolic syndrome; abundant epidemiological and (partial) experimental data help support this assertion. We have to look more widely at estrogens (the different structural-functional types described in the text) to understand their extensive and powerful control of energy homeostasis.