Kawano Hirotaka, Kawaguchi Hiroshi
The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Medicine, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.
Clin Calcium. 2006 Mar;16(3):455-60.
Although sex hormones had been thought to be essential for normal skeletal development and maintenance of bone mass, the physiological role of androgen receptor (AR) in skeletal tissues was not well established. To reveal physiological function of AR on skeletal tissues, we generated AR deficient mice (AR KO) by means of the Cre-loxP system that was used to avoid the problem of male infertility and analyzed their phenotype in skeletal tissues. It was indicated that AR contributes to maintain bone mass in male, but not in female in mice. However, recent studies suggested the contribution of sex hormones to maintain bone mass is different not only between sexes but among species due to the difference of aromatase activity.
尽管性激素被认为对正常骨骼发育和骨量维持至关重要，但雄激素受体（AR）在骨骼组织中的生理作用尚未完全明确。为揭示AR在骨骼组织中的生理功能，我们利用Cre-loxP系统构建了AR缺陷小鼠（AR KO），以避免雄性不育问题，并分析其骨骼组织表型。结果表明，AR有助于维持雄性小鼠的骨量，但对雌性小鼠无此作用。然而，最近的研究表明，由于芳香化酶活性的差异，性激素对骨量维持的作用不仅存在性别差异，还存在物种差异。
