BioProject

Pregnancy has been shown to decrease the risk of mammary carcinogenesis in human rretrospective epidemiological studies. More...

Pregnancy has been shown to decrease the risk of mammary carcinogenesis in human rretrospective epidemiological studies. In rodents, pregnancy prior to carcinogen administration or after carcinogen challenge has also been shown to reduce the incidence of palpable carcinomas. In this study our objective to determine the underlying genomic signature of the pregnancy and reproductive hormones on the mammary gland that contribute to the protection against mammary gland carcinogenesis. We used the rat microarray technology to observe total transcriptome changes after the pregnancy and exogenous reproductive hormone stimulation of the mammary gland. Overall design: Fifteen 3 month old post-pubertal virgin Lewis rats were randomly assigned to three groups (5 rats per group): control (C), pregnancy (P) and hormone treatment (H). The P group animals had a full-term pregnancy (21-23 days) and rats in the group H were implanted subcutaneously on the dorsal midline with two silastic capsules [(0.078 inch inner diameter, 0.125 inch outer diameter) x 2 cm long; Dow Corning, Midland, MI) filled separately with 100 μg ethynyl estradiol (Sigma, St. Louis, MO) packed in a cellulose matrix (Sigma) and 30 mg of megesterol acetate (Sigma) for 21 days. The control animals had neither the hormone treatment nor being pregnant. The animals in C and P groups were also implanted with sham capsules filled with cellulose matrix only. The capsules were surgically implanted at the beginning of the experiment and removed from all animals after 21 days except that the capsules were removed from the P group following parturition (21-23 days). The delivered pups in the P group were euthanized within 4-6 hours of delivery to avoid suckling. After the removal of capsules all groups were rested a total of ~49 days before euthanasia. All animals were euthanized during metestrus stage, determined by vaginal cytology and total RNA was extracted from the mammary gland tissues using Trizol reagent. Less...