Protective effects of growth hormone en cell cultures of the central nervous system

Objective. We examine a possible protective effect from growth hormone (GH) against radiation in cell cultures of rat embryon brain cortex. Material and methods. Brain cortexeswere removedfrom rat embryos of 17 days' development and prepared for cell culture. The culture medium of half the plates was enriched with 500 ng/ml GH. All plates received a radiation dose of 3 Gy per plate and were again incubated for 24 hours. The TUNEL technique was employed to verify cell apoptosis in the irradiated plates and compare its level in plates with and without GH. Conclusions. We observed that irradiated cultures with GH has significantly less cell apoptosis than those without GH and concluded that this hormone excercised a protective effect on the cell cultures. The present study demonstrated the protective effect from GHin rat embryonary cells and suggests the need for future in vitro and in vivo studies using central nervous system cells.