ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Estrogens has traditionally been known as the female hormone, but this idea has been challenged in early 1990’s and an essential physiological role for estrogen in male fertility was identified. Phytoestrogens are naturally occurring non-steroidal plant chemicals that can act like the female hormone estrogen. The herbs ( anise alfalfa and vervain ) chosen in this study contain phytoestrogens. OBJECTIVE: Previous studies demonstrated controversy of the effects of phytoestrogens on the rat testes .Hence, the present investigation was undertaken to investigate the influence of typical dose of herbs containing phytoestrogen on the rat testis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-four apparently normal mature male rats were divided into four groups of 6 animals each. The first "control" group received only 4ml of distilled water as a placebo. The second group received 40mg/kg of anise seed; the third group received 53.3 mg/kg of dried herb of vervain and the fourth group received 400 mg /kg of alfalfa seeds. All experimental groups received the doses through orogastric tube daily for fourteen days. Testicular histology was evaluated by light and enzyme histochemistry. Plasma FSH and testosterone concentrations were taken to support our results. RESULTS: Histological examination of anise, alfalfa and vervain – treated groups showed an increase in the height of germinal epithelia. There was marked lipoprotein lipase activity in the whole of the interstitial tissue which is more in amount in experimental groups than that in control group. Acid phosphatase granules were infiltered the seminiferous epithelia mildly in control group , moderately in anise and vervain groups and markedly in alfalfa group. The number of interstitial cells showing marked acid phosphatase activity was higher in all experimental groups than that in control group. Alkaline phosphatase exhibited intense activity in the boundary tissue of the seminiferous tubules in testes of control and experimental groups but it appeared thicker in the latter. CONCLUSION: The low dose and short duration of treatment used in our study made these phytoestrogen – containing herbs to have a stimulatory effect on leydig cell steroidogenesis. This study also demonstrated that aniseed being the most potent of the three herbs followed by alfalfa in stimulating testosterone synthesis. This is possibly attributed to the coumarin constituent of aniseed and alfalfa. KEY WORDS: phytoestrogen-containing herbs, testis, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase, lipoprotein lipase
An experimental program was conducted to determine the residual of composite Steel Beams-Reinforced Concrete (SB-RC) deck floors fabricated from a rolled steel beam topped with a reinforced concrete slab, exposed to high temperatures (fire flame) of 300, 500, and 700ºC for 1 hour, and then allowed to cool down by leaving them in the lab condition to return to the ambient temperature. The burning results showed that, by exposing them to a fire flame of up to 300ºC, no serious permanent deflection occurred. It was also noticed that the specimen recovered 93% of 19.2 mm of the deflection caused by burning. The recovered deflection of burned composite SB-RC deck floor at 500ºC was 40% of 77.9 mm of the deflection caused by burning with a res
... Show MoreThe Al-Kindy College Medical Journal (KCMJ) is an Iraqi scholarly journal published by the Al-Kindy College of Medicine, University of Baghdad. It was officially founded in 2004. It is a peer-reviewed journal, published in both online and printed forms. It has a mission to offer a publication platform that mirrors recent knowledge and findings in the field of medicine and medical sciences. It publishes various types of articles, including editorial, review article, research article, brief report, case report, and letter to editor. It accepts articles in the English language. It was biannually published till 2021 when it started to launch three issues per year. The journal is registered with numerous partners, including Iraqi Academi
... Show MoreThe optimization calculations are made to find the optimum properties of combined quadrupole lens consist of electrostatic and magnetic lenses to produce achromatic lens. The modified bell-shaped model is used and the calculation is made by solving the equation of motion and finding the transfer matrices in convergence and divergence planes, these matrices are used to find the properties of lens as the magnification and aberrations coefficients. To find the optimum values of chromatic and spherical aberrations coefficients, the effect of both the excitation parameter of the lens (n) and the effective length of the lens into account as effective parameters in the optimization processing
Present study was carried out to find prevalence of MRSA in healthy individual of second stage students, college of pharmacy/Baghdad University. A total of 74 student selected between age 18-23 years old were included in this study, nasal swabs collected and subjected to many diagnostic standard bacteriological identification methods. Culture, colonial morphology, Gram stain, mannitol fermentation, coagulase ,gelatinasetest, DNAase, MR/VP and antimicrobial susceptibility test was performed on tryptic soy agar by modified Kirby-Bauer muller hinton disc diffusion method and the result show that out of 74 nasal swabs,67(90.5%) were MRSA positive isolates, 21(31.4%) of them were mannitol ferment and 46(68.6%) non mannitol fermenter, am
... Show MoreIn this study, we used Bayesian method to estimate scale parameter for the normal distribution. By considering three different prior distributions such as the square root inverted gamma (SRIG) distribution and the non-informative prior distribution and the natural conjugate family of priors. The Bayesian estimation based on squared error loss function, and compared it with the classical estimation methods to estimate the scale parameter for the normal distribution, such as the maximum likelihood estimation and th
... Show MoreObjective Neutrophils own an arsenal of dischargeable chemicals that enable them to handle bacterial challenges, manipulating innate immune response and actual participation in acquired immunity. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) are one of the most important chemicals that neutrophils discharge to eradicate pathogens. Despite their beneficial role, the ROS were strongly correlated to periodontal tissue destruction. Lowdensity neutrophils (LDN) have been recognized for producing enhanced quantities of ROS. However, the potential role of ROS produced by LDN in periodontitis is unknown. The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of ROS produced by LDN in periodontal diseases.