Talk:Prolactin

message: This page could profit greatly from a contribution by a comparative endocrinologist. Prolactin is an ancient hormone and is found in all vertebrates. To limit the treatment of prolactin to lactating mammals is terribly incomplete.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cthompson (talk • contribs) 15:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: While I am not an endocrinologist, I have added text to the Functions section of the article describing some of the functions of prolactin outside of lactation. TLopdell (talk) 04:47, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Need broader scope in this article

message: This article seems to treat prolactin as being peculiar to mammals, or even to humans (the article should clearly indicate when humans are being discussed, as opposed to mammals in general), but the DVD The Blue Planet: Seas of Life: Seasonal Seas / Coral Seas, in the Fact Files part of the Special Features section, says:
:Male seahorses even release the same hormone—prolactin—as female humans.
If this is literally true, it seems some expansion of the scope of the article is called for. - dcljr (talk) 00:35, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prolactin in non-mammals 

message: Speaking as an educated non-specialist, I think there these are important points:
One of the main advantages of an online encyclopedia is that it can, in theory, be kept up to date keeping nearly even with new research. Therefore, items with known correlations should be included somewhere in the article, or at least in a page linked to the article. When we know only part of the relationship, we should put what we know, and update it as new data is learned.
Of course, one of the many forms of update will include removing (or better moving to another page and referencing under 'history') research which is, on reconsideration not accurate.
One reason for saving the history is that sometimes, a 'blind-alley' turns out not to have been so blind, and to leave out mention of the historical view of the subject, the new researchers will have less of an idea of what data has been collected.
Another is that studies often collect data which might be viewed from a different perspective and ad insight to some other unrelated study.
What has to happen is that historical belief has to be separated from the current understanding.
We do not talk about physics on the human level (i.e. Levers & other simple machines) which work well under the Newtonian physics in terms of quantum physics, even though the end result is the same, and the Newtonian physics is, on some level, an 'inaccurate' model of the process. Some models are easier to understand and apply than others and they are used where they do not directly contradict 'more complete' models.
An encyclopedia, by nature, is an attempt to collect as much as possible into a limiteds space. This, because data storage space is not the same as physical storage, is no longer a correct way to define encyclopedia, since an online version can be both 'unabridged' and 'comprehensive.' Ideally, an online encyclopedia either contains or is linked to everything which has ever been said about a topic.
The question is not what to include, it is WHERE to include things.
The main entry should contain multiple references to causes for this syndrome, but they ought to be cases where there is a clear correlation. Less clearly correlated cases should be relegated to a lower level page, or to links to external studies.
IMHO
Wizodd 18:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What to include/exclude...the old arguement. 

message: This article states a function is:"* To decrease normal levels of sex hormones — estrogen in women and testosterone in men."[4]
" The sourcing is pretty poor. Ken Saladin states that in the male it results in "increased LH sensitivity and testosterone secretion" (saladin, p. 643 4ed.) Any clarification on this one? --203.217.79.99 (talk) 09:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Effects on tesosterone production

message: Problems with subsection titles:
*"Conditions caused by elevated prolactin secretion"
**"Pregnancy" - not caused by elevated prolactin. It's the other way around: elevated prolactin is caused by pregnancy.
**"Many anti-psychotic medications" - Hopefully I don't need to explain this one...
*"Conditions caused by decreased prolactin"
**"Bulimia" - evidence suggests that bulimia is caused by excess prolactin, not vice versa.
**"Excess dopamine" - again, cause and effect is being mixed up.
Now, there are two renaming choices to rectify this. There could be four sections, "Conditions causing increased prolactin", "Effects of increased prolactin", "Conditions causing decreased prolactin", and "Effects of decreased prolactin". That would make the most sense. Currently though, I just switched the wording of the current sections to "associated with" rather than "caused by". In any case, this is a classic mix-up of correlation and causation.Fuzzform (talk) 05:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cause and effect 

message: The following paragraph is unsourced, and I find it questionable:
:Increasing prolactin levels in women during pregnancy (especially within first 3 months) and then in the breastfeeding period are responsible for cycles of high sexual satiation, which help protect the child and are amidst natural rewards for procreation. However, fluctuations and drops of this hormone occurring in that period can substantially increase sexual tension and in turn often work for higher desire for orgasms.
Also, it's written unclearly -- I can't tell whether "high sexual satiation" means that sex is very fulfilling, or that the individual feels sexually satisfied much of the time, and thus has less interest in sexual activity. Similarly, I'm not sure whether "higher desire for orgasms" and "increase[d] sexual tension" indicate that sex has become more enjoyable, or that the individual feels less of a response to sex, and has increasing amounts of sex in an effort to feel satisfied. Inhumandecency (talk) 23:38, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Effects on female sex drive 

message: This lacks sources and belongs to either breastfeeding and/or contraception but not this article. Leaving it here if someone wants to reuse elsewhere.
:The World Health Organization states that under special conditions demand breastfeeding is more than 98% effective as a contraceptive in the first six months postpartum. This effect is said to be responsible for the natural spacing of children seen in countries where contraception is not widely available, and is thought to be an evolutionary means of ensuring adequate care is provided to each newborn. The 98% effectiveness applies only if three criteria are met: 
:# The mother has had no menstrual periods at all (amenorrhea)
:# The baby is exclusively breast-fed
:# It is six months or less since birth. 
:*A fourth criterion has also been mentioned: The baby does not go for longer than 5 hours between feedings (i.e. while sleeping)
:If one or more of these conditions are broken, lactational amenorrhea is no longer a reliable form of birth control. This contraceptive method is highly effective as long as the three conditions stated above are fulfilled.  Further, the WHO suggests that a woman who is still amenorrheic has a less-than-5% chance of getting pregnant in the first year of her baby's life, as long as she is still breastfeeding on demand.
Richiez (talk) 20:46, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of breastfeeding as contraceptive 

message: The Segmented Sleep article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep mentions a daily variation in the amount of prolactin, but neither it nor this article gives any feeling for how broad the variation is.  That would be an interesting point to compare with the Reference Ranges...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.83.42.136 (talk) 11:53, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Segmented sleep is talking about brain levels of prolactin and is in desperate need for some citations, the prolactin article is in no way in a shape to start worrying about levels of prolactin in the brain. As of blood levels, the typical night max/day min ration might be 1.5-4. Richiez (talk) 20:32, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Daily variation of prolactin 

message: doi:10.1210/er.2011-1040 (Endocr Rev) might be useful at some point. JFW | T@lk 12:27, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review 

message: the article mentions the possibility of mental health effects due to hyperprolactinemia.  i suggest finding some citations.  such as:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23590895     and more would be a good idea.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.238.36.19 (talk) 21:48, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  no citation for mental health effects 

message: i'm not a med person, so this isn't about any of the medical aspects presented here.  however, the use of the term "maternal organism" i find very strange.  is this common usage for wikipedia physiology pages?  if so, i've not noticed it anywhere else.  and are males who have bred also called "paternal organisms"?  if the term is common in medical discussions, it seems one vocal and politically active segment of western society would find it a godsend (pardon the pun).
perhaps the problem is that this section (maybe the whole page) does not clearly state when it is discussing humans, and when it is discussing non-human mammals, and when it is discussing both?  i assumed the "Effects" section was about human prolactin, not only because it wasn't clearly noted that it WASN'T, but also because of the use of the terms "babies," "women," "men," and "humans" within the section.
granted, non-human mammalian young are sometimes called "babies," although not usually in...scholarly texts.  let's see...from the wiki page on Cattle--"The gestation period for a cow is about nine months long. A newborn baby's size can vary among breeds, but a typical baby typically weighs 25 to 45 kg (55 to 99 lb)."  from the wiki page on Pig--"Some attacks on newborn babies are non-fatal. Others may cause the death of the babies and sometimes, the mother may eat the babies. It is estimated that 50% of baby fatalities are due to the mother attacking, or unintentionally crushing, the newborn pre-weaned babies."
well, maybe i'm wrong on that count.Colbey84 (talk) 08:46, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Effects 

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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120917054024/http://www.endo-society.org/guidelines/final/upload/Diagnosis-Treatment-of-Hyperprolactinemia.pdf to http://www.endo-society.org/guidelines/final/upload/Diagnosis-Treatment-of-Hyperprolactinemia.pdf
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thread_title:  External links modified