A new animal study revealed that oxytocin, the “hormone of love”, linked to affective behaviors, can interrupt pregnancy.
A oxytocinthe hormone known for its involvement in the creation of ties can also play a role in Early pregnancy interruption.
The revelation was done in a study with rats, recently in the Science Advances.
The new investigation showed that hormone can place embryos in the early stages of development in a kind of hibernation state.
Once triggered, this process, designated by diarpausaIt may allow a mouse mouse to postpone a pregnancy at a time when the resources are scarce-for example, when you are still breastfeeding an anterior litter of newborn mice.
Diapause naturally occurs in marsupials such as kangaroos and skunks, and more than a hundred mammalian species, including rats and bats. Although difficult to detect in most human pregnancies, it is a phenomenon that It can also occur in women.
A recalls a case reported in 1996, in a fertilization clinic in vitro (IVF) where it took five weeks after the embryo transfer to the uterus for pregnancy to begin.
In the new study, it was found that the resulting pregnancies lasted about a week more in female rats still breastfeeding than in rats that were not breastfeeding. Researchers theorize that this reflects a PAUSE PRE-IMPLANTATION.
The team began to explore the way this break could occur.
In another group of newly managed mice, the team encouraged oxytocin release. After five days of treatment, they removed mice uteros to evaluate embryonic development. Five of the six rated mothers had embryos that entered diapausal.
However, in a comparison group, The pregnant mice that did not have stimulated oxytocin did not show any signs of diapause.
The great conclusion is that oxytocin caused embryonic cells to slow down the translation of genes into proteins.
At Live Science, researchers report that a better future understanding of these mechanisms may reveal the reason why miscarriage occurs in people and may lead to new fertility treatments.
For now, more work will be needed to understand the biochemical steps that lead to oxytocin stimulation to diapause.
