Effects of Tremella mesenterica on steroidogenesis in MA-10 mouse Leydig tumor cells

Tremella mesenterica (TM), a yellow jelly mushroom, has been traditionally used as food and crude medicine to improve several kinds of symptoms in Chinese society for a long time. Recent studies have illustrated that the fractions of fruiting bodies of TM exhibit a significant hypoglycemic activity in diabetic mouse models, which usually suffer from sexual dysfunction. In a previous study, we showed that TM reduced plasma testosterone production in normal rats without any positive effect in diabetic rats. It evolved a question of TM directly regulating Leydig cell steroidogenesis. In this study, MA-10 mouse Leydig tumor cells were treated with vehicle, different dosages of TM with or without human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG 50 ng/ml) to clarify the effects. Results showed that TM at different dosages (0.01-10 mg/ml) did not have any effect on MA-10 cell steroidogenesis (p > 0.05). In the presence of hCG, there was an inhibitory trend that TA suppressed MA-10 cell progesterone production at 3 hr treatment with a statistically significant difference by the 10 mg/ml TM (p < 0.05). In time course effect, TM alone did not have any effect on MA-10 cell steroidogenesis from at 1, 2, 3, 6 and 12 hr (p > 0.05). However, TM did reduce hCG-treated MA-10 cell progesterone production at 1, 2 and 3 hr (p < 0.05), respectively. To determine whether TM would have adverse effects on MA-10 cell steroidogenesis in the presence of hCG, MTT assay and recovery studies were conducted. MTT assay indicated that TM had no effect on surviving cells. In addition, with the removal of TM, and then the addition of hCG (2 and 4 hr), progesterone levels were restored within 4 hr. Taken together, present studies suggested that TM suppressed hCG-treated steroidogenesis in MA-10 cells without any toxicity effect.