PARENT SESSION

(M559) EFFECTS OF ARECOLINE TO THE PERI-IMPLANTATION MOUSE EMBRYOS IN VITRO.

Liu, Shao-Tung¹, Young, Gau-Chyi², ¹ National Kaohsiung University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C.² Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R. O. C.

ABSTRACT- The chewing of betel quid is a habit of great antiquity, which is widespread in the Oriental and African countries. It was estimated that there were at least 200 million people worldwide who practiced this habit. In Taiwan, the people with betel nut chewing habit was increased and with the tendency of younger, occupation diversity and citilization in the past decade. It was estimated that the number of current and ex-user was estimated at a 2 million people out of total 21 million population. Arecoline is one of the major ingredients in betel nut extract. Since 1960, there were many reports about the relationship between arecoline and cancers, either in animal model or human. Not only the digestive tract, arecoline has been related to the malignancy on respiratory and reproductive system. There were only a few reports concerning the effects of betel quid chewing to the pregnancy. They generally found that betel quid chewing was related to adverse birth outcomes. However, it is important to investigate the effect of arecoline during the processes of establishment of pregnancy. As the first step, we use the model of blastocyst outgrowth to evaluate the growth of mouse pre-implantation embryos (day 4 of pregnancy; vaginal plug = day 1) under 0, 10^-4, 10^-5, 10^-6 and 10^-7M of arecoline for 0, 12, 24, 48 and 72 hours of incubation. We found that growth area of mouse embryos in each arecoline-containing group was smaller than control embryos. In addition, growth area of embryos with 10^-4 and 10^-5 M of arecoline was smaller than control significantly after 24 hours of incubation. Furthermore, we also found that the numbers of cell disaggregated from the main mass of embryo outgrowth with the incresed concentrations of arecoline. Therefore, we suggested that arecoline, the major content of betel nut, inhibits the growth implanting mouse embryos in vitro and the results indicated that arecoline may exerts poisonous effects on implanting embryos in vivo.

KEY WORDS: arecoline, peri-implantation, embryo