earticle

영어

In all mammalian species, progesterone is essential to both the preparation for, and maintenance of, pregnancy. The 20α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (20α-HSD) enzyme predominantly converts progesterone into its biologically inactive form 20α-hydroxyprogesterone, thereby regulating its activity. Thus, to directly assess sexual maturation in the MediKinetics micropig®, we analyzed the concentration of the steroid hormones progesterone and estradiol during the estrous cycle. Our results show that the progesterone level exhibited by the analyzed micorpig® was low at the beginning of the estrous cycle, and then abruptly increased to 30.32±10.0 ng/mL and 46.37±11.0 ng/mL by days 9 and 11 of the cycle, respectively. It reached the highest level 55.87±3.5 ng/mL on day 13 of the estrous cycle, before decreasing to 46.58± 13.1 ng/mL and 10.0±7.6 ng/mL by days 15 and 17 of the cycle, respectively. In contrast, the estradiol level was shown to be highest (27.13±11.2 ng/mL) at the initiation of the estrous cycle, after which point it decreased to 13.29±6.5 ng/mL and 10.94±5.9 ng/mL by days 4 and 5 of the estrous cycle, respectively. By day 17 of the estrous cycle, the estradiol level decreased to 4.13±7.6 ng/mL. We anticipate that these results will provide useful information to enable the study of human ovulation and reproductive physiology using the MediKinetics micoripig® as a model system. We recommend further investigation to elucidate the functional mechanisms underlying the regulation of sexual maturation in the MediKinetics micropig®.