Inhibitory effects of ghrelin on sexual behavior: role of the peptide in the receptivity reduction induced by food restriction in mice

BERTOLDI ML; LUQUE ME; VALERIA PAOLA CARLINI; LAURA VICENTI; GRACIELA STUTZ; MARIA EMILIA SANTILLÁN; RUIZ RUBÉN; MARTA FIOL DE CUNEO; ANA CAROLINA MARTINI

GEORG THIEME VERLAG KG

Año: 2011 vol. 43 p. 494 - 494

div class="cit">Ghrelin (Ghr) is a gut/hypothalamus peptide with inhibitory actions on reproductive physiology; however, there are no previous reports of its role on estrous behavior. Under the hypothesis that the increase of plasma Ghr during food restriction (FR) is responsible for receptivity reduction, we intended to evaluate the receptivity percentage of female mice subjected to: exp. 1) acute and chronic FR and Ghr administration (3 nmol/animal/day, s. c.) and exp. 2) the co-administration of a ghrelin antagonist [ant=(d-Lys3)-GHRP-6; 6 nmol/animal/day s. c.]. All females were ovariectomized, primed with steroids, trained, and randomly subjected every week to each one of several protocols, followed by a behavioral test. Experiment 1 (n=8): basal, no treatment; acute FR (aFR), 24-h fasting; chronic FR (cFR), 50% FR for 5 days; acute ghrelin (aGhr), Ghr 30 min before test and chronic ghrelin (cGhr), Ghr for 5 days. Except for cGhr, all treatments sign