Effect of luteinizing hormone on rabbit ovarian superstimulation and embryo developmental potential.
Assisted reproduction technologies require ovarian stimulation to increase the number of oocytes and embryos. Currently, superstimulation is achieved by gonadotropin treatment, but the embryo yield and quality are highly variable. Commonly, commercial preparations derived from pituitary and urinary origin are used to superovulate. Hence, ovarian superstimulation protocols have usually included both FSH and LH. The appearance of recombinant gonadotropins manufactured by genetic engineering techniques has ensured high quality and batch-to-batch consistency. Moreover, this enables us to assess the importance of LH in the ovarian stimulation. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of recombinant human LH supplementation (10%) on embryonic development produced by rabbit does superovulated with low or high concentration (18.75 or 37.50 IU) of recombinant human FSH (rhFSH). Females treated with rhFSH increased the ovulation rate, and it was significantly higher when the high FSH dose was supplemented with LH. The superstimulation treatment used did not significantly affect in vitro development rate until the expanded blastocyst stage. The results of this study seem to suggest that, in terms of superovulatory response, when rabbit does are treated with 37.5-IU rhFSH, the use of LH supplementation allows an increase in the number of follicles recruited and the quality of embryos, in terms of ability to develop in vitro until blastocyst, and the expression profile of OCT4, NANOG, and SOX2 genes is not affected.
Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Animal (CITA), Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias (IVIA), Castellón, Spain. Electronic address: viudes_mar@gva.es.
M P
MP
Viudes-de-Castro
Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología Animal, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
A
A
Pomares
Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología Animal, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
M D
MD
Saenz de Juano I Ribes
Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología Animal, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
F
F
Marco-Jiménez
Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología Animal, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
J S
JS
Vicente
D000818:Animals; D047108:Embryonic Development / Q000187:drug effects*; D005260:Female; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D007986:Luteinizing Hormone / Q000494:pharmacology*; D050810:Octamer Transcription Factors / Q000378:metabolism; D010062:Ovulation Induction / Q000379:methods / Q000662:veterinary*; D011817:Rabbits / Q000196:embryology*; D055747:SOX Transcription Factors / Q000378:metabolism
D018398:Homeodomain Proteins; D050810:Octamer Transcription Factors; D055747:SOX Transcription Factors; D007986:Luteinizing Hormone
Embryo viability; Gene expression; Rabbit; Recombinant human FSH; Recombinant human LH; Superstimulation