- Academic Editor
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†These authors contributed equally.
Background: Obesity is a worldwide concern due to its global rapid
expansion and remarkable impact on individual’s health by predisposing to several
other diseases. About twice as many women as men suffer from severe obesity and,
in fact, there are stages in a woman’s life when weight gain and adiposity can
result in greater damage to health. For example, obesity triples the chance of a
woman developing gestational diabetes. Many hormones promote the metabolic
adaptations of pregnancy, including progesterone, whose role in female obesity is
still not well known despite being involved in many physiological and
pathological processes. Methods: Here we investigated whether
progesterone treatment at low dose can worsen the glucose metabolism and the
morpho functional aspects of adipose tissue and pancreas in obese females. Mice
were assigned into four groups: normocaloric diet control (NO-CO), high-fat and
-fructose diet control (HFF-CO), normocaloric diet plus progesterone (NO-PG) and
high-fat and -fructose diet plus progesterone (HFF-PG) for 10 weeks. Infusion of
progesterone (0.25 mg/kg/day) was done by osmotic minipump in the last 21 days of
protocol. Results: Animals fed a hypercaloric diet exhibited obesity
with increased body weight (p