“…Although estrogen response elements are present in the promoter regions of the OT-neurophysin (Mohr and Schmitz, 1991) and the VP-neurophysin (Shapiro et al, 2000) genes, the issue of whether estrogen can directly regulate OT and VP gene transcription in the PVH and in the SO is highly controversial (Caldwell et al, 1989;Miller et al, 1989;Burbach et al, 1990;Chung et al, 1991;Amico et al, 1995;Crowley et al, 1995;Nomura et al, 2002;Shughrue et al, 2002). Elevated levels of the mRNAs for OT and, to a lesser extent, for VP were observed during pregnancy and lactation (Lightman and Young, 1987;Van Tol et al, 1988;Zingg and Lefebvre, 1988;Crowley and Amico, 1993), but ovariectomy and estrogen replacement in earlier reports did not appear to significantly alter OT (Miller et al, 1989;Burbach et al, 1990;Amico et al, 1995) or VP (Roy et al, 1999) mRNA levels.…”