Neoflon

In total, 121 ovine uteri were isolated from female sheep at a local abattoir that processed animals (8–24 months old; Swedish Finull and Dutch Texel breeds) for food production. Each uterus was obtained within 5 min after an induced lethal head trauma, and the uterus was dissected free from surrounding organs on the back-table where the uterine arteries were freed and cannulated (20G, BD Neoflon, Becton Dickinson GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany). Each uterus was then perfused slowly through both arteries with ice-cold phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) including lidocaine (0.04 g/l; AstraZeneca, Gothenburg, Sweden) and heparin (5000 IU/l; Vianex S.A., Athens, Greece) until specimen blanched. Organs were kept on ice and transported to the laboratory submerged in PBS. At the laboratory, each uterus was dissected free from the surrounding tissue and frozen (−20°C) in the transport solution until further use (including all material used as control tissue). To reduce variability that could negatively affect the experiments, 32 similar-sized organs (mean = 36.42 g; ± 2.42 g SEM) were selected for the study and randomly divided into four different groups (n = 8), including one normal sheep uterus control group. Animal ethics approval was not needed for these experiments since all animals were killed for food production.