FIGURE 1.

SZ-A alleviates ovarian dysfunction in dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)-induced PCOS rats. Female rats were randomly divided into three groups: SD, PCOS, PCOS +SZ-A. In this experiment, female SD rats were treated with DHEA or oil for 21 days, followed by intraperitoneal injection of SZ-A (200 mg/kg) or PBS, and then treated for 12 days. (A) Flow chart. (B) Body weight. (C) The estrous cycles were determined after another 10 days. (D) Representative ovarian sections stained with H&E (scale = 200) μ M; △ represents cystic follicles; ★ represents corpus luteum, and determine the number of cystic follicles (E) and corpus luteum (F) from these stained sections. Serum testosterone (G) and bile acid (H) levels were measured. (I) TUNEL staining of representative ovary sections. Red arrows point to TUNEL-positive cells. (J) Representative images from immunofluorescence TUNEL staining are presented. These sections have been stained for TUNEL (green). Scale bars are marked on the figures. (K) Western blot was used to detect the expression levels of Pro-caspase-12,Caspase-12,Caspase-3,Cleaved Caspase-3 in ovarian tissue lysates, and GAPDH was used as the loading control. Values are shown as the mean ± SEM (n = 6 rats).*represents significance compared to the SD group (*p < 0.05), # represents significance compared to the PCOS group (#p < 0.05). One-way ANOVA followed by Turkey’s test was used for (E–H) and (K).