Effects of maternal exposure to trichloroethylene (TCE) on cell proliferation in the mouse preimplantation embryo.

Pregnant mice were treated with trichloroethylene (TCE) at doses ranging from 0.01 micrograms/kg body weight to 483 mg/kg body weight when embryos were traversing the pronuclear stages of development. No treatment-related effect was seen on total number of embryos recovered from oviducts at the 2 to 4 cell stage of development. The 4-cell embryos were tested for cellular proliferative disadvantage by the embryo chimera assay in which embryos from treated mothers (experimental embryos) are paired with embryos from nontreated mothers (control embryos) to form aggregation chimeras. No significant cell proliferation decreases were observed for any of the experimental embryos across all doses examined.