Although hormonal regulation of ovarian follicle development has been extensively investigated, most studies concentrate on the development of early antral follicles to the preovulatory stage, leading to the successful use of exogenous FSH for infertility treatment. Accumulating data indicate that preantral follicles are under stringent regulation by FSH and local intraovarian factors, thus pro...

Abnormalities in ovarian function, including defective oogenesis and folliculogenesis, represent a key female reproductive deficiency. Accumulating evidence in the literature has shown that the PI3K/PTEN/Akt and TSC/mTOR signaling pathways are critical regulators of ovarian function including quiescence, activation, and survival of primordial follicles, granulosa cell proliferation and differen...

Ovarian failure leading to infertility can be caused by improper prenatal development of the fetal gonad or disruption of the complex postnatal process of folliculogenesis due to alterations in intragonadal or extragonadal regulation. It is critical to have physiological models that mimic events occurring during human development to understand, treat, and prevent ovarian failure in women. Many ...

Evidence shows that luteinising hormone (LH) participates in enhancing the transition from early to antral stage of folliculogenesis. Functional LH receptor was demonstrated be expressed, albeit at a very low level, even smaller follicles during phase traditionally considered gonadotropin-independent suggesting role for accelerating rate progression non-growing and primary preantral/antral stag...

This paper discusses the phenomenon of nutritional flushing in ewes whereby increased nutrition stimulates folliculogenesis and ovulation rate. In addition the paper reviews recent findings on the effects of increased levels of nutrition on the blood concentrations of reproductive and metabolic hormones in the ewe and some of the intraovarian changes that take place in response to nutritional s...

BACKGROUND Increased expression of the Fragile X Mental Retardation 1 (FMR1) gene in blood cells has been claimed to be associated with variable (CGG)(n) triplet numbers in the 5' untranslated region of this gene. Increased CGG triplet numbers, including that of the so-called premutation range (n= 55-200), were shown to have a risk of <26% to impair ovarian reserve leading to primary ovarian in...