TABLE 1.

The proportion of growing follicles in the transplanted human ovarian cortical pieces

		Patient 1	Patient 2	Patient 3	Patient 4	Patient 5	Mean ± SD
2 weeks	Control	15%	24%	6%	‐1%	5%	10 ± 9%
	EGF	29%	37%	16%	17%	49%	30 ± 12%
4 weeks	Control	22%	9%	4%	24%	30%	18 ± 10%
	EGF	47%	44%	23%	30%	48%	38 ± 10%
8 weeks	Control	18%	19%	15%	13%	41%	21 ± 10%
	EGF	48%	38%	23%	41%	69%	44 ± 15%

Human cortical ovarian pieces were collected from five patients who had PCOS. The tissues were cut into small cubes and incubated with or without EGF for 30 minutes. After being xenografted into the kidney capsule of ovariectomized SCID mice, the follicular distributions in different groups were quantified at 2, 4, and 8 weeks of in vivo development. To statistic the change of follicle activating proportions, each data from individual patient was normalized by the original activating ratio in this patient from fresh tissue before transplantation. Data represent the mean ± SD of biological triplicate experiments.