ACTA VETERINARIA ET ZOOTECHNICA SINICA ›› 2019, Vol. 50 ›› Issue (7): 1466-1474.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2019.07.016

• BASIC VETERINARY MEDICINE • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Reproductive Injury Effects of Bisphenol A Exposure during Pregnancy on Offspring Adult Females

WEI Yuanyuan, CUI Yuqing, HAN Chao, ZHONG Xiuhui, BAO Yongzhan*, SHI Wanyu*   

  1. College of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine, Agricultural University of Hebei, Baoding 071000, China
  • Received:2019-02-15 Online:2019-07-23 Published:2019-07-23

Abstract: This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of bisphenol A (BPA) exposure during pregnancy on the genotoxicity of adult offspring females and gene expression levels of DNA methyltransferase (DNMT). One hundred and twenty pregnant mice were randomly divided into six groups, twenty mice in each group. The pregnant mice were administered with BPA at the doses of 0, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40 mg·(kg·d)-1, from the pregnancy day 0.5 to day 17.5. Ten adult offspring females (56 d) randomly selected from each group were sacrificed after anesthesia and the blood, uterus and ovaries were collected. Then the uterine and ovarian index were calculated; the ovarian histomorphology were observed after hematoxylin-eosin staining (HE). The activity of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH) and the contents of estradiol (E2), progesterone (P4) in serum were detected by radioimmunoassay. The contents of ovarian estrogen receptor α (ERα) and estrogen receptor β (ERβ) were detected by ELISA. The mRNA relative transcription levels of ERα, progesterone receptor (PgR), DNMT1, DNMT3A, and DNMT3B in ovaries were detected by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). The results showed that:1) Compared with the control group, BPA significantly reduced the serum levels of FSH, LH, E2 and P4; 2) BPA significantly increased the ovarian ERα and ERβ levels; 3) BPA significantly reduced the mRNA relative transcript levels of ovarian ERα, PgR and DNMT in the adult offspring females (P<0.05 or P<0.01); 4) The ovarian index were increased in the adult offspring mice exposed to BPA, but the ovarian parenchyma was atrophied and the number of primary and secondary follicles were increased. Our results reveal that BPA exposure to during pregnancy can promote the production of ovarian follicles in offspring females, significantly increase the contents of ovarian hormone receptor, inhibit the transcriptional activity of ovarian DNMT, and reduce the contents of reproductive hormone and activity, causing reproductive damage to adult offspring females.

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