Figure 3. Leptin enhances BCL-2/BAX relationship in human placental explants.

A) Placental explants were processed as described in Materials and Methods and incubated during 24 h in DMEM-F12 media supplemented with increasing leptin doses. DMEM-F12 10% FBS was used as control. Placental extracts were prepared and proteins were separated on SDS-PAGE gels. BCL-2 and BAX expression were determined by Western blot analysis as indicated in the Figure. Molecular weights were estimated using standard protein markers. Molecular mass (kDa) is indicated at the right of the blot. Loading controls were performed by immunoblotting the same membranes with anti-α-tubulin. Bands densitometry is shown in lower panels, results are expressed as mean ± SD for three independent experiments. B) BCL-2/BAX relationship is shown. Statistical analyzes were performed by ANOVA. Asterisks indicate significant differences from the control according to Bonferroni's multiple comparison post hoc test, relative to FBS 0% (*). * p<0.05, ** p<0.01