Abstract

The present study was planned to investigate the role of sex hormone receptor gene expression in the pathogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Adult male Wistar rats were divided into seven groups. Group (1) was negative control. Groups (2), (5), (6), and (7) were orally administered with N-nitrosodiethylamine for the induction of HCC, then group (2) was left untreated, group (5) was orally treated with curcumin, group (6) was orally treated with carvacrol, and group (7) was intraperitoneally injected with doxorubicin, whereas groups (3) and (4) were orally administered only curcumin and carvacrol, respectively. The HCC group showed significant upregulation in the androgen receptor (AR) and the estrogen receptor-alpha (ERα) gene expression levels in the liver tissue. On the contrary, HCC groups treated with either curcumin or carvacrol showed significant downregulation in AR and ERα gene expression levels in the liver tissue. In conclusion, the obtained data highlight that both AR and ERα but not estrogen receptor-beta (ERβ) gene expression may contribute to the male prevalence of HCC induced in male rats. Interestingly, both curcumin and carvacrol were found to have a promising potency in alleviating the male predominating HCC.

Highlights

  • Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) incidence and mortality have globally increased over the last four decades (Abdelaziz et al, 2014; Zekri et al, 2015)

  • The androgen receptor (AR) gene expression level was shown to be significantly downregulated (p

  • Hepatocellular carcinoma was found to show significantly higher prevalence in males, an effect related to sex hormones (Li et al, 2012)

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Summary

Introduction

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) incidence and mortality have globally increased over the last four decades (Abdelaziz et al, 2014; Zekri et al, 2015). HCC has a remarkable increased predominance in males, with a male to female ratios averaging between 2:1 and 4:1 in most published series (Nordenstedt et al, 2010; Zekri et al, 2015). The prognosis for the disease is more benign in females than in males and women have a better survival and a reduced recurrence of the disease after the treatment (El-Serag et al, 2001). From all these evidences, the interest of some researchers has been focused since the 80’s on the possible importance of sex hormones in determining such preference for the male gender (Maria et al, 2002)

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