Testosterone and nerve growth factor have distinct but interacting effects on structure and neurotransmitter expression of adult pelvic ganglion cells in vitro
Section snippets
Experimental procedures
Pelvic ganglia were removed from 41 male outbred Wistar rats (7 weeks of age) anaesthetised with sodium pentobarbitone (48 mg/kg) and animals were then killed. Our procedure did not cause animal suffering and was approved by the institutional animal ethics committee of the University of Queensland, complying with the Australian code of practice for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes. The number of animals used was the minimum required for reliable scientific data. Ganglion
General features of cultured cells
Many neurones started to form neurites after the first day in culture and growth continued in the second day. However in untreated cultures, some neurones did not form neurites even after 2 days such that the mean number of neurites was less than one (Fig. 1, Fig. 3). Under these conditions, most neurites were short (<10 μm) and unbranched. Each treatment had distinct effects on neurite outgrowth (see below), but did not appear to influence the number of neurones surviving on each coverslip.
Discussion
This study has shown for the first time that testosterone can induce significant structural and chemical changes in adult autonomic ganglion cells in vitro. The most profound effects occur in soma size and transmitter expression, and the former mimic those seen in vivo. The changes do not resemble those induced by NGF, indicating that effects of testosterone in vivo are unlikely to mediated by this neurotrophin. However, testosterone inhibits some of the NGF effects, suggesting a level of
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), Grant numbers 34487 and 9935774.
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