Boscolo Sesillo F, Manoochehri H, Duran P, Zelus E, Christman K L, Alperin M
Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA USA.
Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, La Jolla, CA USA.
NPJ Womens Health. 2025;3(1):33. doi: 10.1038/s44294-025-00079-7. Epub 2025 Jun 12.
Pelvic floor muscle (PFM) recovery following childbirth is essential for preserving pelvic floor function. Despite this, the impact of parturition and lactation on pelvic muscle stem cells (MuSCs), indispensable for skeletal muscle maintenance and regeneration, remains unknown. We determined that vaginal delivery does not cause mechanical injury of the rat PFMs, enabling us to uncouple the effects of lactation on muscle homeostasis from PFM regeneration following simulated birth injury (SBI). Tibialis anterior (TA) served as non-pelvic control. This novel study demonstrates that in the absence of birth injury, lactation blocks MuSC proliferation in PFM and TA, suggesting that postpartum systemic milieu affects MuSCs in pelvic and non-pelvic muscles. In contrast, SBI negated the inhibitory effect of lactation on MuSCs in PFM but not in TA, indicating that local signals released by the injured muscle overcome systemic inhibitory effects of lactation, which persist in muscles remote from the site of injury.
产后盆底肌肉（PFM）的恢复对于维持盆底功能至关重要。尽管如此，分娩和哺乳对骨盆肌肉干细胞（MuSCs）的影响仍然未知，而MuSCs对骨骼肌的维持和再生不可或缺。我们确定阴道分娩不会对大鼠的盆底肌肉造成机械损伤，这使我们能够将哺乳对肌肉稳态的影响与模拟分娩损伤（SBI）后盆底肌肉的再生效应区分开来。胫前肌（TA）作为非骨盆对照。这项新研究表明，在没有分娩损伤的情况下，哺乳会阻止盆底肌肉和胫前肌中MuSC的增殖，这表明产后全身环境会影响骨盆和非骨盆肌肉中的MuSCs。相比之下，SBI消除了哺乳对盆底肌肉中MuSCs的抑制作用，但对胫前肌中的MuSCs没有影响，这表明受伤肌肉释放的局部信号克服了哺乳的全身抑制作用，而这种抑制作用在远离损伤部位的肌肉中持续存在。
