Sexual Dimorphism of Elastic Fibers in Prenatal Lung Mice

Abstract

Scientific data has revealed the existence of lung gender differences and therefore sparked a renewed interest in understanding the underlying mechanisms and their effect in the healthy lung development and/or in pathological conditions. Elastic fibers have an important role in lung development during pre and post-natal stages, because a well-developed pulmonary elastic fibers favour pre-natal lung maturation and enhance alveolarization. Sexual differences studies on lung elastic fibers content are focused essentially on the post-natal stage, with scarce data on pre-natal lung development. Using an experimental mice model, we developed this research work to study gender differences in the lungs elastic fibers during gestational days E15-E19, using image analysis and elastin HPLC methodologies. Our results show significant sexual dimorphism in lung elastin and elastic fibers content pre-natal stage, which is more evident in the last two gestational days (E18 and E19). Female’s mice have more elastin and elastic fibers which could mean that the elastogenesis process begins earlier than males. These results are an important contributes to understand the underlying factors involved in physiology and lung development sexual difference.