Reproduction Abstracts

Analgesics which work through altering the production and/or actions of prostaglandins (PGs) are widely used by pregnant women. In earlier research, the analgesics in maternal blood circulation can target cyclooxygenase-2 and PGE2 receptors in fetal germ cells (GC), affect the next generation. Both sexes of F1 rats exposed to analgesic in utero showed reduced germ cell (GC) number in gonads at the fetal stage, and reduced ovarian oocyte reserve in adult stage and/or in the development of the postnatal ovary and folliculogenesis/ovulation in female offspring. Similarly, reduced ovarian weight was observed in female F2 offspring of F1 parents that had been exposed to analgesics. This shows that maternal analgesic exposure does have an inter-generational effect on females in the next generation.

To investigate whether changes in ovarian weight was paralleled with impairment of reproductive system. Three main approaches were performed on the morphology analysis of ovaries at different stage and ovarian reserve. The results in this thesis demonstrated that F1 maternal analgesic exposure did have effect on structure and function of reproductive system of F2 offspring, in puberty stage, female offspring had reduced size of primordial follicle pool, while in adult stage, serum level changed in analgesic exposed F2 offspring. However, whether fertility ability of F2 offspring was impaired needs further studies to figure out the dynamic of oocyte and what leads to the changed profiles of follicle composition.