**5. Conclusions**

The results of this study indicated that AST might have an inhibitory effect on Tinduced BPH, especially in the ventral prostate, possibly due to the regulation of SOD activity and levels of T and DHT. Hence, AST may be a candidate as a novel therapeutic agen<sup>t</sup> to inhibit BPH.

**Author Contributions:** L.W. and Z.S. designed the study; L.W., Y.H., R.W., Q.P., D.L. and H.Y. performed experiments; L.W. analyzed the data and wrote the paper; L.W. and Z.S. revised the paper. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was supported by funding from the Shanghai Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Technologies (no. Q2019-7).

**Acknowledgments:** We thank Congcong Shao, Xin Su, and Rongfu Yang for assistance in the process of castration.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors have declared no conflict of interest.
