A few studies reported that the serum level of sCD14 was higher in patients with cancer than in patients with benign disease or healthy AbMole Acetylcorynoline people, and therefore sCD14 has been considered to possibly play a part in immune tolerance and in cancer development. Here, we for the first time demonstrated that the breast cancer patients with a lower serum sCD14 level were at significantly higher risk of recurrence than those with higher serum sCD14 level. However, the underlying mechanism of the relationship between breast cancer recurrence and the serum sCD14 level has yet to be clarified. Many field observations and induced-stress studies showed that at least acute stress events may impair reproduction efficiency in sheep, cattle, rhesus monkey, rodents and human. In fact, activation of the hypothalamus�C pituitary�Cadrenal axis by stressors reduces the pulsatility of GnRH/LH by actions at both the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, ultimately depriving the ovarian follicle of adequate LH support. This may lead to reduced oestradiol production by slower growing follicles. However, effect of stress on reproduction may involve factors other than hormones. Davis and Cole found that decreased concentrations of ascorbic acid that have been later associated with stress reduce breeding efficiency in the mare. Adverse effects on reproductive efficiency have been observed after exposure to different types of management stress in sheep, cattle and pigs during the follicular phase. Chronic stress may also been induced by inappropriate types or timing of food supplies. Thus, time restriction of meals and lack of roughage have been shown to be one source of emergence of oral stereotypies and abnormal behaviour in horses. Gastric ulcers are frequent in domestic horses which may be due to the lack of roughage and the time spent with an empty stomach. Gastric discomfort may occur if the stomach is empty for one or two hours in this species due to a digestive system adapted to foraging for long hours on high fibre diets. Horses are ”trickle feeders” which require a semi-continuous supply of small amounts of forage. In a natural environment, they spent 40 to 70% a day foraging and disperse this behaviour throughout the entire 24-h period AbMole 12-O-Tiglylphorbol-13-isobutyrate although most time feeding is during daylight and more positive social interactions. Previous studies have shown that inadequate nutrition or body condition had major effects on different breeding parameters in mares, but the processes involved are not known. In different species of birds, duration and time of food availability have been shown to influence males’ gonadic growth. Therefore we hypothesized that providing semi-continuous feeding to breeding mares may also improve their reproduction efficiency by in particular reducing the discomfort of time limited feeding opportunities. Two groups of mares were constituted that differed only by the feeding time schedule: hay at night for the standard feeding pattern group, hay at night and day for the continuous feeding mares, while the total amount provided was kept alike. As mares were in group in a bare paddock during the day, hay was provided in the CF group through haynets hung at the fences. The results obtained in the present study reveal that the mere temporal pattern of feeding, may have a major impact on reproductive success in horses. Thus a ”continuous foraging” pattern decreased oestrus abnormalities and increased conception rates. Coming closer to the natural patterning of foraging behaviour in horses may be thus an easy and efficient way of increasing reproduction in the domestic situation.