Vitamin C Restores Ovarian Follicular Reservation in a Mouse Model of Aging

Background: Aging is a complex biological process that in-volves the depletion of germ cells and loss of ovarian follicles. The maternal age is related with infertility and reduction of ovarian follicles reservation. The aim of this study evaluation of the effect of vitamin C on restores ovarian follicular reserva-tion in a mouse model of aging.Materials and Methods: In this study, 24 adult mice (28‒30 g), divided into four experimental groups: (1) control, (2) ve-hicle (DMSO 2%) (10 µl) (3) busulfan and (4) busulfan+ SCs (1×104 cells/μL). SCs were isolated from 4-week-old mouse testis and after using anesthetics, 10 μl of SCs suspension (1×104 cells/μl) was injected over 3–5 min, into each testis and subsequently, sperm samples were collected from the tail of the epididymis. Afterward, the animals were euthanized and testis samples were taken for histopathology experiments, and RNA extraction, in order to examine the expression of c-kit, STRA8 and PCNA genes.Results: : Our data showed that SCs transplantation could nota-bly increase the total sperm count and the number of testicular cells, such as spermatogonia, primary spermatocyte, round sper-matid, SCs and Leydig cells, compared to the control, DMSO and busulfan groups. Furthermore, the result showed that ex-pression of c-kit and STRA8 were significantly decreased in busulfan and busulfan/SCs groups, at 8 weeks after the last injection (P<0.001), but no significant decrease was found for PCNA, compared to the control and DMSO groups (P<0.05). Conclusion: These findings suggest that SCs transplantation may be beneficial as a practical approach for therapeutic strat-egies in reproductive and regenerative medicine. We further highlight the essential applications that might provide a mecha-nism for correcting fertility in males, suffering from cell de-formity.

Keywords:

Vitamin C , Ovary , Stereology , Aging , Mouse