Progenitor Cells by Follicle-Stimulating Hormone Therapy

Copyright © 2016 Monika Zbucka-Kretowska et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Recently, murine hematopoietic progenitor stem cells (HSCs) and very small embryonic-like stem cells (VSELs) were demonstrated to express receptors for sex hormones including follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). This raised the question of whether FSH therapy at clinically applied doses can mobilize stem/progenitor cells in humans. Here we assessed frequencies of VSELs (referred to as Lin−CD235a−CD45−CD133+ cells), HSPCs (referred to as Lin−CD235a−CD45+CD133+ cells), and endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs, identified as CD34+CD144+, CD34+CD133+, and CD34+CD309+CD133+ cells) in fifteen female patients subjected to the FSH therapy. We demonstrated that FSH therapy resulted in statistically significant enhancement in peripheral blood (PB) numbe