BACKGROUND The purpose of the study was to evaluate the role of Progesterone/ Estradiol (P4/E2) ratio as a predictive tool for clinical pregnancy in ART cycles with a premature progesterone rise of >1.5 ng/ml on the day of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) trigger. METHODS Retrospective analysis was done on 569 fresh embryo transfer cycles from January 2011 to December 2012 at the infertilit...

Objective(s) Gastric ulceration is induced by various forms of stress like surgery, ischemia and trauma. The female sex has more resistance to stress and the gastrointestinal lesions happen fewer than male sex. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of estradiol and progesterone on the gastric acid and pepsin levels following traumatic brain injury (TBI) induction. Materials and M...

STUDY QUESTION Is there a critical period of progesterone (P4) withdrawal in a mouse menstrual-like model, and at what time after P4 withdrawal endometrial breakdown become irreversible? STUDY ANSWER Our results showed that a 12-16 h critical period of P4 withdrawal exists in the mouse menstrual-like model. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY P4 withdrawal is the trigger for endometrial breakdown and she...

The luteal phase of the female menstrual cycle is associated with both 1) elevated serum progesterone (P4) and estradiol (E2), and 2) reduced insulin sensitivity. Recently, we demonstrated a link between skeletal muscle mitochondrial H(2)O(2) emission (mE(H2O2)) and insulin resistance. To determine whether serum levels of P4 and/or E(2) are related to mitochondrial function, mE(H2O2) and respir...

Six quaternary phosphonium salts (QPSs) in combination with phosphotungstic heteropolyacid, H3PW12O40, were tested the epoxidation of rapeseed oil fatty acid methyl esters a hydrogen peroxide aqueous solution. The QPSs consisted trihexyl(tetradecyl)phosphonium [P6], tributyl-tetradecylphosphonium [P4] or tetraoctylphosphonium [P8] cation and different anions—chloride (Cl−), bromide (Br−), tetra...

Blood serum progesterone (P4) levels in donor cows and heifers at donor selection, superovulation, insemination and embryo recovery were investigated. Significant differences in P4 levels in the investigated donors during superovulatory oestrus insemination were observed. The cows with low levels of P4 at insemination (5.8 ± 1.7 nmol/l) showed a better yield and quality of embryos (P<0.01) comp...

Recent evidence suggests that leukocytes infiltrate uterine tissues at or around the time of parturition, implicating inflammation as a key mechanism of human labor. MCP-1 (also known as C-C chemokine motif ligand 2, CCL-2) is a proinflammatory cytokine that is up-regulated in human myometrium during labor. Myometrium was collected from pregnant rats across gestation and at labor. Total RNA and...

PURPOSE The expression of human insulin-like growth factor-II (IGF-II) is regulated by the activation of four promoters (P1-P4) acting in a development-dependent, tissue-specific manner. IGF-II overexpression associated with P3 and P4 activation is observed in animal and human hepatocarcinogenesis. We correlated P4 epigenetic alteration with P4 transcript activation and clinicopathologic featur...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of replacing progesterone injections by progesterone vaginal inserts on productive and reproductive parameters of lactating cows with reproductive problems after prolonged periods of heat stress. Fifteen Holstein cows were randomly assigned to one of three treatments: 1) treated with two progesterone vaginal inserts (P4-INS); 2) treated with prog...

For graphs G and G' with minimum degree is = 3 and satisfying one of two other conditions, we prove that any isomorphism from the P4 -graph P4 (G) to P4 ( G') can be induced by a vertex-isomorphism of G onto G'. We also prove that a connected graph G is isomorphic to its P4 -graph P4 (G) if and only if G is a cycle of length at least 4.