**1. Introduction**

90 Sex Steroids

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Evidence has accumulated over a number of years for the existence of a new cell type found in cavitary and parenchimatous organs - called telocytes (TCs). The cell biology of TCs, and especially their function is a rapidly growing area of biomedical research (Figure 1) (freeaccess data is available at www.telocytes.com). TCs are also present in fallopian tube (Popescu et al., 2005a) and uterine walls (Ciontea et al., 2005).

Progress in cellular and molecular techniques led to the identification of subtypes and isoforms of estrogen receptors (ER) (Green et al., 1986; Kuiper et al., 1996; Tremblay et al., 1997) and progesterone receptors (PR) (Kastner et al., 1990; Giangrande & McDonnell, 1999) in the female reproductive tract, two for each receptor (ERα and β, and PR A and B). Cells of the female reproductive tract are subject to hormonal control via sex steroids receptors. Subsequently, we investigated the expression of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) in cell cultures enriched in TCs, obtained from the muscle coat of both the fallopian tube and uterus.
