Epidemiological reports and laboratory data have associated soy and genistein with reduced incidence of uterine, breast, and prostate cancers, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis, and lower total blood cholesterol. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of genistein in the uterus and vagina of rats, focusing our attention on the distribution of transforming growth factor (TGF) ...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have supported the concept of "fetal programming" which suggests that during the intrauterine development the fetus may be programmed to develop diseases in adulthood. The possible effects of in utero protein restriction on sexual development of rat male offspring were evaluated in the present study. METHODS Pregnant Wistar rats were divided into two experimental gro...

S-metolachlor is a chloroacetanilide herbicide widely used in the agriculture to control weeds and was demonstrated that it increases the activity of the aromatase enzyme in cell cultures, which may culminate as endocrine disruption action in vivo. To investigate this hypothesis, prepubertal Wistar male rats were exposed to metolachlor (5 or 50 mg/kg/day, NOEL for reproductive toxicity: 23.5-26...

The dopamine modulation of neuronal excitability in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) changes during critical late periods of postnatal development. In particular, D2 receptors activate fast-spiking interneurons after, and not before, adolescence. To test the functional impact of this change, we investigated the effects of dopamine agonists on PFC excitatory synaptic transmission with whole-cell reco...

Early postnatal exposures to Bisphenol A (BPA) and genistein (GEN) have been reported to predispose for and against mammary cancer, respectively, in adult rats. Since the changes in cancer susceptibility occurs in the absence of the original chemical exposure, we have investigated the potential of epigenetics to account for these changes. DNA methylation studies reveal that prepubertal BPA expo...

Objective(s): Nowadays, Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) is widely used in different kinds of commercial products as a plasticizer. Previous studies have revealed that exposures to DEHP could be associated with precocious puberty in teenagers, but the exact mechanism is yet to be known. Materials and Methods: In this study, 48 prepubertal Wistar female rats were randomly apportioned into 4 gr...

The testes of the monkey, Macaca fascicularis, from birth to adulthood and of rats from puberty to adulthood were examined by both light and electron microscopy to estimate the mitotic activity of the Leydig cells. In monkeys, mitotic activity was measurable only in neonates: 2.3% in Leydig cells and 0.4% in fibroblast-like cells. From measurements of 3H-thymidine incorporation, mature Leydig c...