Association of single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the ESR2 and FSHR genes with poor ovarian response in infertile Jordanian women / 대한생식의학회지

Objective@#Poor ovarian response (POR) refers to a subnormal follicular response that leads to a decrease in the quality and quantity of the eggs retrieved after ovarian stimulation during assisted reproductive treatment (ART). The present study investigated the associations of multiple variants of the estrogen receptor 2 (ESR2) and follicle-stimulating hormone receptor (FSHR) genes with POR in infertile Jordanian women undergoing ART. @*Methods@#Four polymorphisms, namely ESR2 rs1256049, ESR2 rs4986938, FSHR rs6165, and FSHR rs6166, were investigated in 60 infertile Jordanian women undergoing ART (the case group) and 60 age-matched fertile women (the control group), with a mean age of 33.60±6.34 years. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were detected by restriction fragment length polymorphism and then validated using Sanger sequencing. @*Results@#The p-value of the difference between the case and control groups regarding FSHR rs6166 was very close to 0.05 (p=0.054). However, no significant differences were observed between the two groups in terms of the other three SNPs, namely ESR2 rs1256049, ESR2 rs4986938, and FSHR rs6165 (p=0.561, p=0.433, and p=0.696, respectively). @*Conclusion@#The association between FSHR rs6166 and POR was not statistically meaningful in the present study, but the near-significant result of this experiment suggests that statistical significance might be found in a future study with a larger number of patients.

Growth retardation and apoptotic death of tumor cells by Artemisia herba-alba oral administration in Ehrlich solid carcinoma bearing mice

ABSTRACT At present, there is a rapidly growing interest in studying the cytotoxic effects of Artemisia herba alba Asso, Asteraceae, in various cancer cell lines. However, its antitumor effectiveness has not been investigated. Therefore, the current study was conducted to study the effect of A. herba alba extract on the proliferation and growth of solid tumor cells in Ehrlich Solid Carcinoma bearing mice. Oral administration of A. herba alba extract resulted in significant reductions in tumor size, tumor weight and mice body weight, as well as caused concurrent significant increases in the DNA breakages and apoptotic DNA damage induction in a time-dependent manner. A. herba alba extract also raised the expression level of p53 gene and reduced of K-ras expression in a time-dependent manner. Minor histological lesions were observed in the liver and kidney tissues sections of mice administered A. herba alba extract compared with the high histological lesions observed in the liver and kidney tissues of artesunate and cisplatin treated groups. Thus, we concluded that A. herba alba extract exhibited promising potential antitumor efficacy with greater safety than artesunate and the commercially used anticancer drug cisplatin in mice.