Morphologic changes in fresh and vitrified mouse ovaries after retinol palmitate administration

Background: retinoids have been suggested to play a role in oogenesis and oocyte survival.objective: in the present study the effects of ret inol palmitate were inves tigat d on di fferent ialfollicular counts in respon se to superovulation as well as follicle qua lity after vitrifica tion of ovaries.materials and methods: ten, 4 week old female balb/c mice were randomly as igned to eithe rparaffin (n=5) or retinol palmitate (n=5) administration . vitamin a admin istered animals received(i.p .) 250 iv retinol palmitate, dissolved in 0.1 ml of paraffin oil on days one and ten followed bysuperovulation with 10 iu pmsg. paraffin administered mice were only treated with 0.1 ml ofparatfin oil. the collected left ovarie s from both paraffin and vitamin a administered groups wereconsidered as non-vitrified and the collected right ovaries from both treated gro ups underwentvitr ification. ovarie s in the vitrified group were frozen sequentially by placing into two vitrificationsolutions {vs 1: 10% ethylene glycol (eg), 10% dmso in holding medium (tcm- 199 + 20% fbs:hm) and ys2: 20% eg, 20% dmso in hm}. after warming, recovered ovaries as well as nonvitrifiedovaries were serially sectioned and examined histopathological ly.results: the proportion of antral follicles in the non-vitrified ovaries from vitamin a adm inisteredmice was statistically higher than the non-vitri fied ovaries from paraffin admi nistered group (29.4%vs. 15.6%, respectively; p