The hormone prolactin is probably best known for its role in stimulating milk production in mothers after giving birth. But apart from the lacto-production, prolactin also has an important function in the liver. This organ has the highest number of prolactin receptors in the body, ports that allow this hormone to enter liver cells. There, prolactin signals these cells to multiply and new blood vessels to grow to fuelthis organ's expansion.
Wondering if these properties might be useful to encourage the liver to regrow after surgery to remove part of it-sometimes necessary to treat cancer or other liver diseases, or to donate liver tissue for transplants-Carmen Clapp of the Universidad Nacional Automoma de Mexico and her colleagues worked with animal models on both ends of a prolactin spectrum: rats that overproduced the hormone, and mice specially bred to have no prolactin receptors, the equivalent of a dearth of the hormone since prolactin can't enter these animals' cells.
The researchers found that the animals with extra prolactin had larger livers, regenerated their livers faster after partial removal, and were significantly more likely to survive that liver surgery compared to the animals that couldn't process prolactin. Researchers may also come out with direct correlation of molecular pathways and affirm a solution.
This is truely a revolutionary discovery
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