The Relation of Hydrocortisone Injections to Cleft Palate in Mice

Abstract

THIS account reports the results of experiments in which pregnant mice of unpedigreed ancestry were injected on a single day of gestation with hydrocortisone acetate for the purpose of studying factors causing cleft palate in unborn embryos. The point of departure was a series of experiments by Fraser, Fainstat and their colleagues^{1 , 2} demonstrating that four daily injections of 2.5 mg. of cortisone acetate into pregnant mice of two highly inbred strains beginning on the eleventh day of pregnancy regularly induced cleft palates in the progeny from one strain, but did so in only 17 per cent of progeny from another . . .