Methods for the evaluation of responses to estrogen in individual cell types or regions of the uterus.

Nongenomic responses to estrogen and the genomic responses in the different uterine cell types can be dissociated selectively. The present report describes morphometric methods for the evaluation of estrogen-induced uterine edema and of genomic responses in individual cell types. The morphometric measurements of the genomic responses correlated with a classically accepted biochemical method of genomic response evaluation in the uterus (increase in RNA/DNA). Edema correlated with the classically accepted method of evaluation of uterine water imbibition, i.e., estrogen-induced increase in uterine wet weight 6 h after hormone administration.