hormesis and female sex hormones毒物兴奋效应和女性的性激素.pdfVIP

Pharmaceuticals 2011, 4, 726-740; doi:10.3390/ph4050726 OPEN ACCESS pharmaceuticals ISSN 1424-8247 /journal/pharmaceuticals Review Hormesis and Female Sex Hormones Jakob O. Strom 1,*, Annette Theodorsson 1,2 and Elvar Theodorsson 1 1 Institution of Clinical and Experimental Medicine/Department of Clinical Chemistry, Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden 2 Institution of Clinical and Experimental Medicine/Department of Neurosurgery, Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: jakob.strom@liu.se; Tel.: +46-73-9560108; Fax: +46-010-1033240. Received: 12 April 2011; in revised form: 5 May 2011 / Accepted: 10 May 2011 / Published: 16 May 2011 Abstract: Hormone replacement after menopause has in recent years been the subject of intense scientific debate and public interest and has sparked intense research efforts into the biological effects of estrogens and progestagens. However, there are reasons to believe that the doses used and plasma concentrations produced in a large number of studies casts doubt on important aspects of their validity. The concept of hormesis states that a substance can have diametrically different effects depending on the concentration. Even though estrogens and progestagens have proven prone to this kind of dose-response relation in a multitude of studies, the phenomenon remains clearly underappreciated as exemplified by the fact that it is common practice to only use one hormone dose in animal experiments