Journal
REPRODUCTION FERTILITY AND DEVELOPMENT
Volume 32, Issue 4, Pages 383-391Publisher
CSIRO PUBLISHING
DOI: 10.1071/RD18498
Keywords
ewe lambs; sheep
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Funding
- University of Adelaide, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences Research Committee
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The use of juvenile in vitro embryo transfer (JIVET) is limited by variation between prepubertal lambs in ovarian response to exogenous gonadotrophins. In cattle, anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) is a predictive endocrine marker of antral follicle count. In this study we measured plasma AMH concentrations in lambs at 3 and 5 weeks of age and determined associations between AMH concentrations and ovarian response to gonadotrophins and in vitro blastocyst production at 6-8 weeks of age in a JIVET program. At 5 weeks, AMH (n = 38) was positively correlated with surface antral follicle count (r = 0.87, P < 0.001), blastocysts produced (r = 0.92, P < 0.001) and blastocysts produced as a proportion of oocytes collected (r = 0.44, P < 0.01) or cleaved (r = 0.43, P < 0.01). Similar associations were observed between AMH at 3 weeks (n = 30) and follicle number (r = 0.70, P < 0.05) and blastocysts produced (r = 0.87, P < 0.05). Lambs with high (>2.2 ng mL(-1)) compared with medium (0.4-2.2 ng mL(-1)) and low (<0.4 ng mL(-1)) AMH at 5 weeks had more antral follicles (mean (+/- s.e.m.) 118.7 +/- 13.9 vs 68.2 +/- 8.1 and 30.4 +/- 12.3 respectively; P < 0.05) and more blastocysts produced (mean (+/- s.e.m.) 54.9 +/- 6.9 vs 18.9 +/- 4.0 and 7.5 +/- 6.1 respectively; P < 0.05). These results suggest that AMH concentration at 5 weeks of age can be used to select donor lambs which enhance the success of JIVET programs.
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