The ethanol extract of Ganoderma lucidum showed inhibitory activity on both isozymes (types 1 and 2) of 5a-reductase and suppression effects of ventral prostate growth induced by testosterone in castrated rat, but not induced by dihydrotestosterone. Activity-guided fractionation and TLC analysis suggested that the active principles in vivo were triterpenoids. These results indicate that the tri...

‰Á " ¡ —²ˆê Kato et al. (1-3) and Booth and Gillette (4) demonstrated that the sex difference in the activities of drug-metabolizing enzyme systems of rat liver microsomes is related to the anabolic action of male sex hormone. In fact, they demonstrated increases in the activities of drug-metabolizing enzymes of liver microsomes of castrated female rats by the treatment with synthetic hormones ...

Men have an increased risk of cardiovascular and renal diseases and develop greater renal injury despite similar levels of blood pressure when compared with women. The mechanisms responsible for this predisposition are unknown. Using the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR), we have found that androgens play an important role in the development of hypertension in young male SHR. However, the ro...

The 20-kDa protein gene is androgen regulated in rat ventral prostate. Intron 1 contains a 130-base pair complex response element (D2) that binds androgen (AR) and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) but transactivates only with AR in transient cotransfection assays in CV1 cells using the reporter vector D2-tkCAT. To better understand the function of this androgen-responsive unit, nuclear protein inte...

[1,2,6,7-3H]Testosterone (25OpCi) was administered to castrated male rats; after 30min a labelled testosterone-receptor protein complex with a pl of 5.1 was recovered from the pancreatic cytosol. A labelled testosterone-receptor complex with an identical pl was also extracted from the nuclear fraction of rat pancreas after incubation of minced pancreatic tissue with 0.1 puM-[1,2,6,7-3H]testoste...

Despite the importance of testosterone as a metabolic hormone, its effects on myocardial metabolism in the ischemic heart remain unclear. Myocardial ischemia leads to metabolic remodeling, ultimately resulting in ATP deficiency and cardiac dysfunction. In the present study, the effects of testosterone replacement on the ischemic heart were assessed in a castrated rat myocardial infarction model...

We examined the effect of androgens on bladder blood flow (BBF), bladder function and histological changes in castrated male rats. Male Wistar rats were classified into unoperated group (control group), groups castrated at the age of 8 weeks (group 8wPC) and groups castrated at the age of 4 weeks (group 4wPC). Each rat was used at the age of 20 weeks. BBF was measured using fluorescent microsph...

Denervation stimulates quiescent satellite cells in skeletal muscle to reenter the cell cycle. In the androgen-sensitive rat levator ani muscle (LA), this mitotic response to loss of neural input fails to occur in castrated animals. To elucidate the role of androgens in denervation-induced satellite cell proliferation, the denervated LA of castrated rats (Group A) was compared with that of anim...

Sex-related differences in cardiac function have been well documented. The extent to which sex hormones are responsible for these differences is unclear. The current study was designed to determine whether castration and androgen replacement resulted in changes in functional expression of genes encoding the L-type calcium channel and Na/Ca exchanger in isolated rat ventricular myocytes. Sixteen...