To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that the
addition of EGF to long-term goat secondary follicle culture medium influenced antrum formation, follicular growth and meiotic
resumption and significantly altered estradiol production and the
mRNA expression levels for EGF and EGF-R.
In the current study, high rates of follicle survival were observed in all of the treatments tested, and the addition of EGF did
not result in any additional effect on survival. This result was expected, as the control medium used in the present study was selected based on that used in a previous study by our group,
which demonstrated that the addition of increasing concentrations
of FSH could significantly improve follicular survival and growth