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
Phase change material (PCM) is considered as one of the most effective thermal energy storage (TES) systems to balance energy supply and demand. A key challenge in designing efficient PCM-based TES systems lies in the enhancement of heat transmission during phase transition. This study numerically examines the privilege of employing twisted-fin arrays inside a shell-and-tube latent heat storage unit to improve the solidification performance. The presence of twisted fins contributes to the dominating role of heat conduction by their curved shapes, which restricts the role of natural convection but largely aids the overall heat-transfer process during solidification. The heat-discharge
The aims of this reserch is identify evaluate the organizational commitment level of (emotional, standard, continuous) and the level of discipline dimensions (functional duties, professional responsibility and ethics) for medical doctors in Ramadi Teaching Hospital due to their relationship with the organization effectiveness the level of completion work and the importance of the expected results in the field respondent
sample of (50) doctors has from all branches and specialties, including specialist doctors consultants and practitioners as well as branches of residence and senior the most prominent results reached are the emotional and the st
... Show MoreThe present study is concerned with studying the effect of aquatic plant Hydrella vorticellata with the concentration of 10 and 20 gm/2 K gm soil on percentage and growth rate of germinating seeds of Hordeum vulgare and Vicia faba. More overs, the quantitative amount of NPK in both tested plants and Hydrella vorticellata, are estimated as an organic fertilizer. It has also been find the total number of root cells, the number of dividing cells, and stages of mitosis. The study reveales, that there are no significant differences between the concentration of hydrella used in germination percentage, growth rate, wet and dry weight. While there are differences in the plants containing NPK. The number of cells dividing stages and number of divid
... Show MoreThis paper presents the results of the slope failure analyses from fracture distributions and their relation to tectonic activity; the analytical results have indicated that the phenomena of plane failure, wedge failure and toppling failure can occur at almost of the survey sites within the study area.
The statistical data show that the fracture orientation mainly develop in the E-W, N-S and NW-SE due to the influence of tectonic activity. The occurrence of them together with the rock slope surface orientation has formed plane failure on the slope surface of the 3B highway in the E-W direction and the types of wedge failure and toppling failure on the slope surface of the highw
... Show MoreThe aim of this research is to introduce agricultural insurance, to define financing in the form of salam and the role of agricultural insurance in the prevention of risks to agricultural finance operations in the form of salam by verifying the hypotheses through which to reach the results, including the imposition of risks for agricultural finance in the form of salam, The study of agricultural finance in the form of salm, the deductive approach to the development of the problem of research and hypotheses, and the inductive method to extrapolate the results through analysis and brother The researcher concluded that agricultural insurance works to bridge the risks facing agricultural finance in the form of the ladder in cases of
... Show MoreIntroduction: We aimed to assess the impact of adhesive and wires types on the tensile bond strength of fixed lingual retainers. Methods: A total of 160 intact bovine teeth were collected, cleaned, stored in 25% sodium hypochlorite, and randomly assigned to two groups based on the adhesive type: a two-step adhesive and a one-step adhesive. Each group was further divided into four subgroups based on the type of lingual retainer wire, which included (A) 8-strand braided stainless steel wire, (B) three-strand titanium retainer wire, (C) stainless steel chain, and (D) fiber-reinforced retainer. A tensile bond strength test was conducted using a universal testing machine at a controlled speed of 10 mm/min. Result: The 8-strand braided stainles
... Show MoreThe advent of UNHCR reports has given rise to the uniqueness of its distinctive way of image representation and using semiotic features. So, there are a lot of researches that have investigated UNHCR reports, but no research has examined images in UNHCR reports of displaced Iraqis from a multimodal discourse perspective. The present study suggests that the images are, like language, rich in many potential meanings and are governed by clearly visual grammar structures that can be employed to decode these multiple meanings. Seven images are examined in terms of their representational, interactional and compositional aspects. Depending on the results, this study concludes that the findings support the visual grammar theory and highlight the va
... Show MoreSoftware Defined Network (SDN) is a new technology that separate the control plane from the data plane. SDN provides a choice in automation and programmability faster than traditional network. It supports the Quality of Service (QoS) for video surveillance application. One of most significant issues in video surveillance is how to find the best path for routing the packets between the source (IP cameras) and destination (monitoring center). The video surveillance system requires fast transmission and reliable delivery and high QoS. To improve the QoS and to achieve the optimal path, the SDN architecture is used in this paper. In addition, different routing algorithms are used with different steps. First, we eva
... Show MoreDistributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on Web-based services have grown in both number and sophistication with the rise of advanced wireless technology and modern computing paradigms. Detecting these attacks in the sea of communication packets is very important. There were a lot of DDoS attacks that were directed at the network and transport layers at first. During the past few years, attackers have changed their strategies to try to get into the application layer. The application layer attacks could be more harmful and stealthier because the attack traffic and the normal traffic flows cannot be told apart. Distributed attacks are hard to fight because they can affect real computing resources as well as network bandwidth. DDoS attacks
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