Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2017
Mice lacking a functional leptin gene (ob/ob) are obese and sterile. Treatment with exogenous leptin will restore fertility and allow full-term pregnancy, but when leptin is withdrawn at parturition the young die, apparently as a result of total lactation failure (Chehab et al., 1996). From this one could hypothesise that leptin is an essential requirement for mammary development and/or initiation of milk secretion. Since a few of the mice used in this work were subsequently able to rear pups following a second pregnancy and parturition, we decided to re-examine this hypothesis.