Peritoneal fluid (PF) samples were collected through laparoscopy from 60 female patients to study its effect on in vitro early embryogenesis. Thirty of them were complaining of unexplained infertility and the remaining 30 were fertile, requesting laparoscopic tubal sterilization and were considered as a control group. The PF samples were subjected to (1) estimation of total protein concentration, (2) detection of different protein bands by sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), (3) qualitative estimation of TNF-c* by Western blotting, and (4) study its effect on in vitro cleavage of 2-cell mouse embryos. The total protein concentration was significantly higher in PF of unexplained infertility group (mean 27.4 mg/ml) than control group (mean 21.07 mg/ml) (P <0.05). Nearly, the same protein bands were detected by SDS-PACE in both groups. A peritoneal fluid band of 32 kD appeared in 5/30 cases of the unexplained infertility group but in non of the control group. TNF-a band was detected in nitrocellulose paper (by Western blotting) in all cases of the unexplained infertility group as compared to 7/30 of the fertile control group. The embryotoxicity of PF of the unexplained infertility group was significantly high (P <0.05). The number of embryos that reached to the blastocyst stage in 2-cell mouse embryos after exposure to PF of unexplained infertility and control groups were 220/310 and 280/300 embryos respectively |
