Nawaz S, Lynch M P, Galand P, Gerschenson L E
Am J Pathol. 1987 Apr;127(1):51-9.
It is known that estrogen (E) and progesterone (P) play important roles in the regulation of endometrial growth. In the rabbit endometrial epithelium, a balance is maintained between cell proliferation and cell death which seems to be under ovarian hormonal control. In this study the authors determined cell proliferation by quantitating the mitotic index (MI) and cell death by quantitating the death index (DI) in uterine histologic sections from whole animals that were hormone treated versus control rabbits. E caused proliferation of uterine epithelial cells and decreased the DI transiently, while P also increased proliferation but decreased the DI dramatically. In a time course study, after a single injection of human chorionic gonadotropin to induce pseudopregnancy, there was transient decrease in the DI and an increase in the MI between Days 2 and 5. In pseudopregnant animals, hormones had no effect in intact animals, but after ovariectomy there was about a 124-fold increase in the DI, which could be prevented by P administration. The predominant type of cell death observed in this system is apoptosis (97.5%), as opposed to necrosis (2.5%). Thus, it is proposed that cell death may be as important as cell proliferation in the regulation of normal uterine epithelial growth.
已知雌激素（E）和孕酮（P）在子宫内膜生长调节中发挥重要作用。在兔子宫内膜上皮中，细胞增殖与细胞死亡之间保持着一种平衡，这种平衡似乎受卵巢激素控制。在本研究中，作者通过对接受激素处理的完整动物与对照兔子宫组织切片中的有丝分裂指数（MI）进行定量来测定细胞增殖，并通过对死亡指数（DI）进行定量来测定细胞死亡。E导致子宫上皮细胞增殖并使DI短暂降低，而P也增加增殖但显著降低DI。在一项时间进程研究中，单次注射人绒毛膜促性腺激素诱导假孕后，在第2天至第5天期间DI出现短暂降低，MI增加。在假孕动物中，激素对完整动物无影响，但卵巢切除术后DI增加约124倍，而给予P可预防这种情况。在该系统中观察到的主要细胞死亡类型是凋亡（97.5%），而非坏死（2.5%）。因此，有人提出在正常子宫上皮生长调节中，细胞死亡可能与细胞增殖同样重要。
