Abstract
Evaluation of: Lumbers ER, Kim MY, Burrell JH et al. Effects of intrafetal IGF-1 on growth of cardiac myocytes in the late gestation sheep. Am. J. Physiol. 296(3), E513–E519 (2009).
A range of growth factors, including IGF-1, play a role in the prenatal growth and maturation of the heart in humans and sheep. IGF-1 was infused into the sheep fetus for 4 days from 120 days of gestation to test the hypothesis that IGF-1 increases fetal heart weight and cardiomyocyte growth. However, IGF-1 infusion had no effect on heart weight. IGF-1 infusion increased cardiomyocyte volume in male fetuses only, leading the authors to investigate the effect of sex on cardiomyocyte growth and development. At 128 days of gestation, females had a lesser proportion of mononucleated cardiomyocytes than males. The volume of these cardiomyocytes was greater in females than in males. Lumbers et al. were the first to investigate the effect of sex on cardiomyocyte growth and development during fetal life.
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Financial & competing interests disclosure
Janna Leigh Morrison was supported by fellowships from the Heart Foundation (PF 03A 1283 and CR 07A 3328) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC; Biomedical CDA 511341). Janna Leigh Morrison acknowledges research funding from the NHMRC. Doug Alexander Brooks was supported by a NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship and receives other research funding from the NHMRC. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.