Table 2.

The cardiovascular effects of gonadectomy and hormone supplementation in mice.

Stimulus	Treatment	Conclusions	Ref.
Aortocaval fistula	Ovariectomized female rats and intact controls subjected to volume overload	The loss of ovarian hormones resulted in more severe pathologic remodeling, suggesting that estrogen is protective in this setting	[84]
Transverse aortic constriction	Ovariectomized female mice treated with estrogen or placebo subjected to pressure overload	Estrogen treatment improved cardiac function and reduced cardiac dilation	[117]
Transverse aortic constriction	Ovariectomized female mice treated with estrogen or placebo subjected to pressure overload	Estrogen treatment improved cardiac function compared with placebo	[85]
MI	Intact and gonadectomized male mice treated with estrogen or placebo subjected to MI; intact and gonadectomized female mice treated with testosterone or placebo subjected to MI	Intact males displayed increased mortality and cardiac dilation compared with intact females post-MI; both estrogen treatment of intact males and gonadectomy improved function and decreased mortality post-MI; testosterone treatment of intact and gonadectomized females increased mortality and decreased cardiac function post-MI; this supports the hypothesis that estrogen is protective and testosterone is detrimental in post-MI	[30]
MI	Ovariectomized female mice treated with estrogen or placebo subjected to MI	Estrogen did not modify mortality, cardiac function or cardiac mass post-MI	[117]
MI	Intact male rats treated with testosterone or placebo	Testosterone reduced mortality and pathologic cardiac remodeling post-MI suggesting that testosterone may be beneficial in males	[94]

MI: Myocardial infarction.