Assignment for Course-Pradeep B. Patil

Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome

IVF has important role in Sweden as every year 3.3% kids are born with the use this technology. However, Sweden has successfully managed to get rid of one of the two drawbacks (multiple births) by passing a law and strategy of one sperm per IVF. This has shown no significant change in success rates in IVF attempts compared to multiple sperms.

Regarding another problem of IVF technology is OHSS, which has been looked upon thoroughly for different mechanisms and strategies to avoid complication. Few of them are easy to follow, like skipping stimulated cycle and implanting frozen embryos in normal cycle.

Hormonal imbalance leads to OHSS causing many complications viz., abdominal distention, ascites, pain, weight gain, nausea, oliguria, haemo-concentration, hypovolemic, electrolyte imbalance, liver dysfunction, dyspnea, pulmonary embolism, thromboembolism. On that basis some symptomatic and hormonal therapy is also tried.

Fallopian tube physiology

Fallopian tube is one the important site of ectopic pregnancy. This behavior of implantation is only seen in human and no other animal model is identical in physiology or pathophysiology. Apart from that fallopian tube is also found to be involved in ovarian cancer (>50%). This has given an extra angle towards ovarian cancer treatment and prevention.

Testosterone and prostate

Prostate is male accessory sex gland has high role in fertilization as it neutralizes vaginal acidic secretion and provide nutrition to sperms. Daily 0.5 ml is secreted in urine, however during ejaculation up to 2 ml milky white secretion is secreted. Testosterone was found to be important player in prostate cancer initially, however later some subtypes found to be resistant. Gleason’s score and PSA is used to detect prostate cancer which sometime becomes amplifying cause for disease prevalence. In Sweden there is high mortality with prostate cancer. Anti androgen and surgical therapies are available with their side effects. Orchiectomy has found to be not sufficient in all prostate cancer.

I was interested mostly in progesterone and estrogen. I use hormone induced mating animals in one of my experiments and I was interested to know the role of hormone in implantation. I heard that estrogen is very much important in implantation as it promotes VEGF concentration in uterus leading to micro-angiogenesis.

I also understood that progesterone contraceptives are one of the reasons for ovarian cancer as feedback mechanisms leading to high level of estrogens causing ovarian cancer. Since, I use progesterone single dose in my studies, it has given me a reason to check for cancer markers in my tissue of interest.