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Effect of sex hormones on heme oxygenase expression in rat ventral prostate

Tian Jian, Zheng Yu, Yang Chun

Department of Physiology,West China School of Preclinical and Forensic Medicine of Sichuan University.Chengdu 610044,Sichuan；China

Abstract

The results showed that twoisoforms of HO were present in rat ventral prostate. The epithelial cells of acini and fibromuscular stroma of the rat prostte displayed HO-1 immunoreactivity, whereas HO-2 immunostaining was only examined to be in the acinar cells. Both at protein and transcript levels, HO-1 in castrated group was markedly decreased compared with the normal control group (P<0.01). In groups of exogenous administration of androgen and estrogen HO-1 was much higher than that in the control groups (P<0.01). However, estrogen increasd HO-1 protein level in prostate stroma, while the levels of HO-1 did not ive any evidence of change among all groups (P>0.05). These findings suggest that expression of HO-1 gene is induced by sex hormones, in contrast, there is no change in HO-2 expression. We speculate that CO-HO system is possibly involved in the pathologic processes processes of prostates abnormal proliferation induced by sex hormones and that CO derived from HO-1 may play an important role in the regulation of smooth muscle activity in rat prostate.

Key words: prostate;heme oxygenase;castration;sex hormones

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Citing This Article：

Tian Jian, Zheng Yu, Yang Chun. Effect of sex hormones on heme oxygenase expression in rat ventral prostate. Acta Physiol Sin 2004; 56 (1): (in Chinese with English abstract).