Fig. 2.

Plasma steroid hormone levels in sham and ovx rats with or without treatment. Circulating plasma levels of 17β-estradiol (E₂; a, c) or progesterone (P₄; b, d) for ovariectomized (ovx) rats transplanted with hormone pellets for the pharmacological-HRT (pHRT) treatments (a, b) or bioengineered ovarian constructs (c, d) for the cell-based-HRT (cHRT) treatment and testosterone (e) for ovx rats treated with bioengineered ovarian constructs. For pHRT a, b, 0.25 mg E₂ pellets with a release kinetics of 10 μg/kg per day were implanted to achieve low-dose E₂ delivery, while 1.25 mg E₂ pellets with a release kinetics of 50 μg/kg per day were implanted to achieve high-dose E₂ delivery with or without a fixed dose of 50 mg P₄ pellets with a release kinetics of 2 mg/kg per day to achieve a physiological dose of P₄. The figures represent the data from one of three separate sets of experiments (n = 10 for each experiment). Each data point represents the mean ± SEM of 10 animals (biological replicates) with each data point as a single technical experiment. * indicates significance p < 0.05 compared to ovary-intact rats; † indicates significance p < 0.05 compared to ovx rats as determined by a one-way ANOVA followed by Student–Newman–Keuls post hoc analysis