Aging
Navigate
Submit an Article
Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 12|pp 4175—4187

Melatonin alleviates meiotic defects in fetal mouse oocytes induced by Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate in vitro

Zhong-Yi Sun1, Pan Zhang2, Jun-Jie Wang3, Jing-Cai Liu3, Lan Li3, Wei Shen3, Qiu-Yue Zhai1,3,4
  • 1Center for Reproductive Medicine, Urology Department, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen 518036, China
  • 2Chengdu Women’s and Children’s Central Hospital, Chengdu 610031, China
  • 3College of Life Sciences, Institute of Reproductive Sciences, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao 266109, China
  • 4School of Basic Medicine, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Received: August 30, 2018Accepted: December 6, 2018Published: December 26, 2018
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101715

Copyright: © 2018 Sun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), an estrogen-like compound that is a ubiquitous environmental contaminant, has been reported to adversely affect human and mammalian reproduction. Many studies have found that exposure to DEHP during pregnancy perturbs female germ cell meiosis and is detrimental to oogenesis. Previous studies have demonstrated that melatonin (MLT) is beneficial to reproductive endocrinology, oogenesis, and embryonic development as the ability to antioxidative and antiapoptotic. However, whether the meiotic defect of germ cells exposed to DEHP could be rescued by MLT is not clear. Here, we cultured 12.5 days post coitum (dpc) fetal mouse ovaries for 6 days, exposed them to 100 μM DEHP with or without 1 μM MLT in vitro.. The results showed that DEHP exposure induced the abnormal formation of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), and inhibited the repair of DSBs during meiotic recombination. In addition, we found defective oocytes were prone to undergo apoptosis. Notably, this defect could be remarkably ameliorated by the addition of MLT via a reduction of the levels of reactive oxygen species and an inhibition of apoptosis. In conclusion, our data revealed that MLT had a protective action against the meiotic deterioration of fetal oocytes induced by DEHP in the mouse in vitro.