The intrafollicular concentrations of biologically active cortisol in women rise abruptly shortly before ovulation and follicular rupture.

Study Question: What is the temporal activity and the concentration in follicular fluid (FF) of the anti-inflammatory steroid cortisol during the ovulatory process in humans?

Summary Answer: Intrafollicular concentrations of cortisol become massively upregulated close to ovulation concomitant with an exceptionally high biological activity securing a timely and efficient termination of inflammatory processes.

What Is Known Already: Ovulation has been described as a local, controlled inflammatory process resulting in the degeneration of the follicle wall which facilitate oocyte extrusion. Ovulation also affects the glucocorticoid metabolism of granulosa cells (GCs) and although de novo synthesis of cortisol only occurs in the adrenal cortex, the mid-cycle surge has been shown to induce a change from high expression of HSD11B2, inactivating cortisol to cortisone, to high expression of HSD11B1 which reversibly catalyses cortisol production from cortisone.

Oestreicher and elastography.

A sphere moving back and forth in tissue generates the kinds of complex displacement fields that are used in elastography. The analytical solution of Hans Oestreicher for this phenomenon [(1951). J.

Biological Effects of Low-Frequency Shear Strain: Physical Descriptors.

Biological effects of megahertz-frequency diagnostic ultrasound are thoroughly monitored by professional societies throughout the world. A corresponding, thorough, quantitative evaluation of the archival literature on the biological effects of low-frequency vibration is needed. Biological effects, of course, are related directly to what those exposures do physically to the tissue-specifically, to the shear strains that those sources produce in the tissues.