Establishment of proper oxygen and nutrient supply to the fetus is essential for a successful pregnancy. The maternal-fetal interface is the site of vascular modifications, providing a conduit for the delivery of essential nutrients to the developing fetus. Pregnancy-dependent adaptive vascular responses within the uteroplacental compartment can be exaggerated by exposure to a physiological str...

Azole agents especially Miconazole are widely used even during pregnancy as antifungal agents. The aim of this study was to assess the usefulness of FTIR Micro-Spectroscopy for discriminating of Miconazole treated liver tissue from control liver tissue. The mice were injected with Miconazole (60 mg/Kg) on gestation day 9 and they were dissected on pregnancy day 15. The fetus fixed, dehydrated a...

Side effects of ciprofloxacin (CPFX), a widely used broad spectrum antibiotic with fluoroquinolone core, have been reported in different organs. In the present study we sought to elucidate the impact of ciprofloxacin on sperm chromatin integrity and sperm DNA damage using Aniline Blue and Acridine Orange technique, respectively. The fertility potential in male mice was also evaluated. NMRI male...

Fetal growth is a complex process that depends on the genetic makeup of the fetus, the success of the implantation process, the availability of nutrients and oxygen to the fetus, intrauterine insults (e.g., hypoxia, cigarette smoking, infection), maternal nutrition, and a variety of growth factors, cytokines, and proteins of maternal and fetal/placental origin (see refs. 1, 2 for reviews). In t...

The ability to discriminate between acoustic signals of different frequencies is fundamental to the interpretation of auditory information and the development of language perception and production. The fact that the human fetus responds to sounds of different frequencies raises the question of whether the fetus is able to discriminate between them? To investigate whether the fetus has the abili...

Cold exposure induces brown adipocytes in retroperitoneal fat (RP) of adult A/J mice but not in C57BL/6J (B6) mice. In contrast, induction of the mitochondrial uncoupling protein 1 gene (Ucp1) in interscapular brown adipose tissue (iBAT) shows no strain dependence. We now show that unlike iBAT, in which Ucp1 was expressed in the fetus and continued throughout life, in RP, Ucp1 was transiently e...