Abstract
The effect of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) on the development of liver preneoplastic foci was evaluated. The experimental protocol used initiation by diethylnitrosamine (DENA), followed by selective growth induced by partial hepatectomy (PH), in rats fed an N-acetylamino-fluorene (AAF)-containing diet, and followed by a standard diet with or without 0.05% phenobarbital (PB). DHEA (0.6%) was administered in the diet for 4 or 7 weeks after DENA injection (treatments A and B) or for 3 weeks after the end of AAF feeding (treatment C). On the 7th week after DENA injection, DHEA treatments A and C caused slight decrease of body weight and 40–60% increase in liver weight and cell size; number of nuclei per g of liver was not changed. The dietary treatment also caused a marked decrease of liver glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) activity and of the percentage of the γ-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT)-positive liver. PB increased G6PD activity and GGT-positive liver. This effect was oblated by DHEA treatments A and C. On the 7th week, the labeling index (LI) was low in surrounding liver, and high in GGT-positive foci. PB had an enhancing effect, while DHEA treatments A and C were inhibitory. G6PD was low at the end of DHEA treatment B, but it returned to normal values 4 weeks after the end of this treatment. At this time no effect of DHEA treatment B was observed on the extent of GGT-positive liver and LI. The observation that an inhibition of GGT-positive liver formation occurs when DENA is given at the end of the AAF/PH treatment in DENA initiated rats could indicate that the DHEA antipromoting effect depends more on growth inhibition than on interference with carcinogen metabolism.