Hypoxia means a decrease in the oxygen level in the body tissues, which causes a decline in the vital activities of the cells. Under lower oxygen concentration, oxidative stress occurs due to free radicals’ accumulation in the body tissues. The free radicals are natural products of physiological activity in the body. The free radicals contribute the oxidant-antioxidant levels to keep in balance in the organism. If the free radicals disrupt the oxidant-antioxidant balance, tissue integrity is destroyed. In parallel with, when the oxygen concentration falls below 6%, defects appear in iron metabolism, glucose metabolism, neurogenesis, angiogenesis, and cell proliferation. As conclusion, the cells develop some adaptive responses to survive under hypoxic conditions. The hypoxia involves both pathophysiological conditions such as; mountain sickness, cancer, obstructive sleep apnea, atherosclerosis, ischemic disease and physiological processes during embryo development. In the early embryonic stage, hypoxia prevents cell proliferation and causes neural cell death. At the same time, craniofacial malformations occur depending on the hypoxia. The hypoxia comprises four-category as hypoxic, anemic, hypoperfusion, and histotoxic. In this review, particularly emphasized on the embryos exposed to histotoxic hypoxia, which exists in the event of oxidative stress that occurs to the accumulation of free radicals in the culture medium. The embryo culture procedure allows to study early development activities because of maternal metabolism is disabled. In this way, the embryo is examined directly without maternal effects. In this review, it is discussed how the histotoxic hypoxia is induced due to changes in gas rates in embryo culture medium. This review aims to provide information about the effects of antioxidant substances and plant extracts application to remove hypoxia induced free radicals accumulation ended with oxidative stress on the morphological development of the embryo. Thus, morphological scoring parameters, yolk sac diameter, head-aft length, somite number are observed and many biochemical parameters, histological and molecular biological examinations are made with this technique.

Keywords: Hypoxia, Embryo Culture, Rat, Embryo Development

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