Characterising the corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) receptors mediating CRH and urocortin actions during human pregnancy and labour.

The mechanism of human labour remains unresolved. One of the most important regulatory signals, however, appears to be corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), a hypothalamic peptide that controls the body's response to stress, which is also produced by the placenta and intrauterine tissues during pregnancy. CRH belongs to a family of peptides that includes urocortin, which shares sequence homology with CRH and is also expressed by the placenta and intrauterine tissues. During human pregnancy circulating CRH appears to have five main target tissues: the myometrium, the placenta, the fetal membranes, the fetal adrenal cortex and the vasculature. In these tissues CRH plays a role in the control of myometrial contractility,placenta vasodilation, peptide and prostaglandin production and adrenal steroidogenesis and probably many more, yet unidentified processes. The actions of CRH in these tissues are mediated via specific G-protein coupled membrane-bound receptors. These receptors have different functional characteristics, depending on where they are expressed and on the stage of pregnancy. In addition, their function depends upon other intracellular signals via communication between signalling cascades. These findings led us to propose a hypothesis for a dual role of CRH and other CRH-like peptides during pregnancy and labour.