Evaluation of in vitro embryo implantation in the presence of steroid hormones

Background: Implantation involves a fine coordination and dialogue between embryo and endometrium. It is influenced by steroid hormones, growth factors and cytokines in a paracrine manner. So the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of steroid hormones on the in vitro embryo implantation and related genes expression.Methods: After confirming the normality of the human endometrial tissues, the stromal endometrial cells were isolated with collagenase type 1 and passed through 100 and 40 μm filters, respectively. Collected stromal cells were cultured in DMEM/F-12 medium to the fourth passage and then cultured for 7 days in two parts. The control group (without hormones) and experimental group were treated with 0.3 nmol/L of estrogen and 63.5 nmol/L of progesterone. The blastocysts were collected from the superovulated mice on the morning of 5th day of pregnancy. The collected embryos were transferred on the top of endometrial cultured cells in both groups on the 5th day of culture. Morphological and structural evaluation of embryo implantation and the related genes expression (αvβ3 integrin, LIFR and IL-1R) were assessed by inverted, transmission and scanning microscopy and real time RT-PCR respectively.Result: At the morphological and ultrastructural level, the prominent difference was not seen and our observations indicated that the trophoblastic area expanded and interacted with the stromal cells. Also the presence of pinopodes-like structures and cell secretions showed the morphological and functional changes in stromal cells for embryo reception in two groups. At the molecular level, the expression of IL1-R was significantly increased in experimental group compared to the control but the αv, β3 and LIFR gene expression did not differ in these groups (P≤0.05).Conclusion: This study showed that steroid hormones can be effective on the expression of genes related to implantation in the human endometrial stromal cells in presence of embryo.

کلیدواژه ها:

Endometrial stromal cell ، Estrogen ، Gene expression ، Progesterone ، In vitro implantation