Abstract
PurposeThe importance of the surrounding ovarian stromal cells and extracellular matrix in the development and maturation of follicles has recently gained attention. An aberrant extracellular matrix has been described in ovaries of patients with polycystic ovary syndrome where a more rigid structural environment, possibly induced by endogenous testosterone, impairs normal folliculogenesis. In this context, we describe the textural parameters of the ovarian cortex of transgender men after prolonged testosterone administration compared to the textural parameters of the non-exposed ovarian cortex originating from female oncological patients.MethodsTexture profile analysis (TPA) was performed on ovarian cortex (5 × 5 mm) of oncological and transgender patients in order to measure stiffness, hardness, cohesiveness, and springiness of the ovarian cortex (LRXplus universal testing system). Statistical analysis was performed using repeated measurements mixed models and the Spearman rank order correlation test (IBM SPSS Statistics 23).ResultsA total of 36 frozen-thawed cortical strips (5 × 5 mm) were subjected to TPA. The superficial part of cortex fragments originating from transgender persons (fragments < 1.4 mm; N = 10) appeared to be significantly stiffer compared to cortex derived from oncology patients (fragments < 1.4 mm; N = 7) (6.78 ± 1.38 N/mm versus 5.41 ± 0.9 N/mm respectively, p = 0.036).ConclusionsThis is the first application of TPA in ovarian cortex to study the physical properties. Comparing the physical properties, we objectively describe an increased cortical stiffness in the most outer part of the ovarian cortex following prolonged testosterone administration in transgender men compared to the ovarian cortex of oncological patients. This preliminary and novel approach could be the start of future research to understand the physical properties of ovarian tissue.
Highlights
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.The importance of the surrounding ovarian stromal cells and extracellular matrix in the development and maturation of follicles has recently gained attention [1]
36 cortex fragments were processed for Texture profile analysis (TPA) (S1 video), of which 2 analyses (1 fragment of a transgender person and 1 fragment from an oncological patient) were excluded from the results due to technical errors (1 exclusion because of wrong TPA settings and 1 because of an error during compression)
A typical TPA double compression curve of ovarian cortex is characterized by a slower upstroke in the toe (0.1–1 N) region, where increasing compression resulted in a steeper upstroke prior to the peak
Summary
The importance of the surrounding ovarian stromal cells and extracellular matrix in the development and maturation of follicles has recently gained attention [1]. An aberrant extracellular matrix has been described in ovaries of patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), resulting in a more rigid structural environment for the residing follicles and causing a dysfunctional follicle development [4]. Both theca cell hyperplasia in vivo and a more rigid alginate artificial ovary matrix in vitro have been correlated with an increased
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
