The effect of food restriction on artificially stimulated decidual cells in pseudopregnant rats / Nur Amalina Md Nawawi

The artificially stimulated decidual cell reaction or DCR is commonly used as a model for the study of changes occurring in the uterus during, before, and after implantation. The purpose of this investigation was to identify the population of these cells affected by food restriction at certain time period. The rats were assigned into three groups of treatments: (i) day 1 to 5 of pseudopregnancy (before implantation), (ii) day five to nine of pseudopregnancy ( after implantation), (iii) day one to nine of pseudopregnancy (both before and after implantation) and one control group which was given the pellet food ad libitum. The treatment groups were given 11 gram of pellet food per day on the day prescribed. Then decidualization was induced by injecting 1 mL of com oil into one of the uterine horn intraluminally. The decidual cells growth was assessed by measuring the fresh weight of stimulated uterine horns. The experiments have been carried out and the results showed that the food restriction treatment does reduced the decidual cells growth. The average of percentage weight of traumatized horns per body weight of control group was 0.72. Meanwhile the average of percentage weight of traumatized horns per body weight of food restriction group of day one to five, five to nine and one to nine of pseudopregnancy are 0.6579, 0.6208, and 0.5806 respectively. From the results obtained showed that the longer the food restriction time, the lighter the weight of the weight of traumatized horns.