[SOUND] So that was one external source of estrogen, phyto-estrogens. And again, there are many different ones and many different kinds of plant have them. But there's another source of potentially external estrogen source. And that's something called zearalenone. It's a mycotoxin from fungi. Very, very highly estrogenic and produced by Fusarium species. Again, a variety of different species. This would be the genus name. A variety of different species of Fusarium. Again, fungi, they tend to grow on stored corn, well grains, corn and other grains. Especially when there's a fair amount of moisture in those grains. Obviously, for especially farm animals and so on we're many times feeding stored grains. This is an issue, it's something to be aware of. Effects may include infertility, abortion, breeding problems, especially in swine but certainly in other species [INAUDIBLE]. These all wrap around that estrogenic impact on the animal. Now to look at the impact on the mammary gland though, I'm going to use a couple case studies here. The first one is some Holstein heifers. A group of Holstein heifers, these two particular animals that were eight and 12 months old. They were not pregnant. So around the time of puberty, this one's probably not gone through puberty yet, this one might have. These were observed to have all four quarters of the mammary gland significantly enlarged. When mammary secretions were removed from these quarters, it resembled skim milk. They were negative for bacteria, meaning this was not being caused by mastitis, it's being caused by something else. Normal prepubertal reproductive tracts, so that part seemed to be okay. There were 15 other animals in the group. Other open heifers with varying degrees of mammary development. So they weren't quite developed as these two. But they had again, some level of memory development which was beyond what we expect to that particular age. No other symptoms noted. Zearalenone again, this mycotoxin was identified in the corn that they are being fed. And so one of things we can think about is well, okay, this happens we have identified the culprit here, that's what driving that mammary development in these animals. Can they recover from it? Can we take that corn away, feed them something else and they will get better? And the answer was yes. So, removing that particular corn source from the diet, again the corn source having the zearalenone on it. After three weeks, the other of these heifers have decreased in size. By seven weeks, they seem to be pretty much normal. So the answer was yes. And they also then had normal conception rate. So they didn't seem to long term affect their reproduction. So again, zearalenone, very, very highly estrogenic, can just one example in one species cause mammary gland development. Let's go to the next slide which is a little bit different situation. This was in sows and their piglets. So multiparous sows. So they'd already gone through lactation before. This is actually a controlled study, so the other one was a case study. This is a controlled study where they were actually feeding zearalenone, different levels of zearalenone to the animals after weaning. So they'd gone through lactation, take the piglets off. And then after weaning, start feeding the zearalenone and seeing what happens later on. Those that were getting high levels of zearalenone in their diet, in the feed, many of them ended up being pseudopregnant. Now pseudopregnancy, so in pregnancy in the pig, what happens is very early on, there's a spike of estrogen. Actually there's a couple of spikes of estrogen, which tell the animal that it's pregnant. And it'll then maintain that the uterus, assumes it's pregnant, the animal assumes it's pregnant. And so this high level zearalenone that is causing that animal to think it's pregnant, even though it's in fact not pregnant. So that's what we call pseudopregnancy. And it'll go through the whole, basically the whole, even up to 120 days, something like that. And those animals, even though they were not pregnant, the mammary glands did redevelop. And even some of those came in with some milk towards the end of that time period, the end of that pseudopregnancy. That's again clearly showing that this estrogenic compound is causing mammary development. And even then driving that into at least the first stage of electrogenesis, if not even a little bit further. What's really particularly interesting, I would sound particularly interesting is that those sows that were fed low levels of zearalenone. Many of them did farrow but they had smaller litters in terms of numbers of piglets. But all the female piglets that were born to these cells, that were fed the low level zearalenone had both the swollen vulva. Again, vulva being very sensitive. Remember the reproductive tract of the pig is very sensitive to estrogen. So swollen vulva and signs of early development of the mammary glands. So that zearalenone was not only affecting the mom, it was passing through the milk and into the baby piglets. And causing some reproductive issues there, as well as development of the mammary glands in these baby piglets. So again, a fairly strong external source of estrogen is this microtoxin called zearalenone. So let's very, very quickly review what we've hit in this, gone over this video. Again, sources of estrogen, [INAUDIBLE] sources during pregnancy, placenta is a major source of estrogen. But again, what we're talking about in these videos in the absence of pregnancy. Ovary had a couple condition, cystic ovaries, that could affect it a little bit in terms of mammary development. Especially in some of these ovarian tumors that secrete very, very high levels of estrogen for extended period of time. In some cases, even in the presence of fairly high concentrations of progesterone. Which are kind of like big combination that we see during pregnancy causing, driving mammary gland development. External sources of estrogen, phytoestrogens are fairly weak estrogens. It doesn't mean that they can affect or do not affect the mammary gland. But again, they're especially effective in an over ectomized animal, which we only do in terms of controlled experiments and things like that. They are fairly weak estrogens, but even there inspite the fact that they're weak. There can be situations where are the animals consuming very large quantities of the phytoestrogen. Which can then impact it, both reproductively, as well as impacting the development of the mammary gland. And zearalenone, this mycotoxin, again fairly high estrogenic activity that could certainly impact mammary gland development. As well as the lactogenesis function in the animal. [SOUND]
