Leptin treatment rescues the sterility of genetically obese ob/ob males.
Leptin, a hormone secreted from white adipose tissue, has been shown to normalize the body weight of ob/ob but not db/db mice as postulated by Coleman in his classical parabiosis experiments. The major effect of leptin is therefore to decrease food intake, thus resulting in a breakdown of fat stores. Recently, we have suggested that leptin plays a role in reproductive physiology based on the observation that leptin treatment but not food restriction rescues the sterility of ob/ob females. In the present communication, we treated sterile ob/ob males with leptin and asked whether fertility could be induced, thus selecting their reproductive ability as the endpoint of the experiment. Our results show that all food-restricted ob/ob males are unable to impregnate normal C57BL/6J females. However, all leptin-treated ob/ob males fertilized normal females mice that carried out normal pregnancies and deliveries, demonstrating that the reproductive capacity of ob/ob males was corrected only with leptin treatment. Furthermore, reproductive indices such as testicular weight and histology are normalized in leptin-treated animals. Therefore, as in ob/ob females, leptin plays a significant role in the male mouse reproductive pathways.
Mounzih
K
K
Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California, San Francisco 94143-0134, USA.
Lu
R
R
Chehab
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FF
D000818:Animals; D001835:Body Weight; D004435:Eating; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D007246:Infertility; D020738:Leptin; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D009765:Obesity / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009929:Organ Size / Q000187:drug effects; D011506:Proteins / Q000494:pharmacology*; D013737:Testis / Q000473:pathology
D020738:Leptin; D011506:Proteins