I am planing to use tamoxifen in inducible-Cre mice. I was wondering if there are differences in the effects of tamoxifen in male and female mice that would make better to use one or another. Since I will conduct in vivo physiology test, my main concern is that tamoxifen could lead to hormonal disturbances in female mice.
Any comment would be greatly appreciated,
Thank you in advance.
Hi Andres,
I have been working with tamoxifen in mice for over 10 years now. Yes, there are differences in the side-effects between males and females. What we found is that 5 days tamoxifen administration (at a dose of 2mg/26g of body weight) leads to an irreversible arrest in weight gain in females, while this effect is not seen in males. We did our tamoxifen injections in mice ranging from 3 months to 9 months of age, and the effect is the same regardless of the age of the mice. We believe this is indeed due to hormonal disturbance, (I don't know why it is is irreversible though) but other than that we did not see any other obvious differences.
Best regards,
Paula
