To investigate the effect of diazepam on fetal development in pregnant rats, this experiment was performed in eighty Sprague-Dawley female rats which were 8 weeks old and grouped into two according to different diazepam treatment period during 5-9 days of gestation and 10-14 days of gestation. Both experimental groups were included by saline treated groups (control) and diazepam-treated groups (6mg, 12mg and 24mg), respectively. Diazepam was injected to pregnant rats subcutaneously, which were wacrified on 20 days of gestation and mean litter size, fetal body weight, fetal crown-rump length (CRL) and pathological findings were examined. 1. Concerning mean litter size, diazepam-treated groups showed lower mean litter size than control in both 5-9 days and 10-14 days of gestation groups(p0.05) without difference according to dosage of diazepam and day of gestation. 2. Concerning fetal body weight, diazepam-treated groups during 5-9 days of gestation showed lower fetal body weight than control and the other treated group during 10-14 days(p0.01) without difference according to dosage of diazepam. Diazepam-treated group during 10-14 days of gestation showed no difference among experimented groups. 3. Concerning fetal crown-rump length (CRL), diazepam-treated groups during 5-9 days of gestation showed shorter CRL than control and the other treated group during 10-14 days of gestation(p0.01) without difference according to dosage of diazepam. 4. Reduction of mean litter size, fetal body weight and CRL was shown from when treated by the dosage of 6mg/kg of diazepam. 5. Maternal mortality according to dosage of the 20mg/kg of diazepam were 30% and 20% in the treated group during 5-9 days and 10-14 days of gestation, respectively. These results indicated that diazepam treatment in pregnant rats caused considerable reduction of mean litter size, fetal body weight and fetal crown-rump length when treated during 5-9 days of gestation.

Galectin-3 plays an important role in cell development, differentiation and cancer metastasis, including cell-cell/extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions and is supposed to have an effect of apoptosis on T-cells in thymic clonal selection. In this study, to know the effect of galectin-3 on thymocyte development, we used recombinant human galectin-3 (rHgal-3) from Escherichia coli, JM105, which was inserted with human gal-3 gene-transformed plasmid vector (prGal-3) to express human galectin-3. Expressed rHgal-3 was confirmed by western blot using the culture supernant of hybridoma (M3/38) producing monoclonal antibody to human galectin-3. Sepharose gel affinity chromatography was used to purify the expressed rHgal-3. Thymocytes and hepatocytes from 6-week-old male BALB/c mice were incubated with rHgal-3 and showed marked increase of apoptotic population on analysis using flow cytometry with 7-AAD in a dosedependent manner. However, rHgal-3 failed to induce apoptosis on hepatocytes. Interestingly, this apoptotic effect was not inhibited by lactose, a specific lectin domain inhibitor. From these results, we concluded that extrinsic galectin-3 induces apoptosis on mouse thymocytes, and galectin-3 may have an apoptotic effect on T-cells in thymic clonal selection.