1. Inhibitory effects of ghrelin on sexual behavior: role of the peptide in the receptivity reduction induced by food restriction in mice
- Author
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L. M. Vincenti, María Emilia Santillán, A. C. Martini, R. D. Ruiz, Valeria P. Carlini, Eugenia Mercedes Luque, M. Fiol de Cuneo, M. L. Bertoldi, and Graciela Stutz
- Subjects
Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism ,Ovariectomy ,Clinical Biochemistry ,Receptivity ,Growth hormone receptor ,Biology ,Biochemistry ,Basal (phylogenetics) ,Mice ,Sexual Behavior, Animal ,Endocrinology ,Internal medicine ,medicine ,Animals ,Estrous cycle ,Estradiol ,Biochemistry (medical) ,Body Weight ,Antagonist ,General Medicine ,Feeding Behavior ,Ghrelin ,Rats ,Hypothalamus ,Growth Hormone ,Ovariectomized rat ,Female ,hormones, hormone substitutes, and hormone antagonists - Abstract
Ghrelin (Ghr) is a gut/hypothalamus peptide with inhibitory actions on reproductive physiology; however, there are no previous reports of its role on estrous behavior. Under the hypothesis that the increase of plasma Ghr during food restriction (FR) is responsible for receptivity reduction, we intended to evaluate the receptivity percentage of female mice subjected to: exp. 1) acute and chronic FR and Ghr administration (3 nmol/animal/day, s. c.) and exp. 2) the co-administration of a ghrelin antagonist [ant=(d-Lys3)-GHRP-6; 6 nmol/animal/day s. c.]. All females were ovariectomized, primed with steroids, trained, and randomly subjected every week to each one of several protocols, followed by a behavioral test. Experiment 1 (n=8): basal, no treatment; acute FR (aFR), 24-h fasting; chronic FR (cFR), 50% FR for 5 days; acute ghrelin (aGhr), Ghr 30 min before test and chronic ghrelin (cGhr), Ghr for 5 days. Except for cGhr, all treatments significantly decreased the percentage of receptivity (mean±SEM): basal 61.9±6.0, aFR 33.1±8.1, cFR 18.8±7.7, aGhr 45.6±10.6, p
- Published
- 2011