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
Two field experiments were carried out for cultivating yellow maize crop Zea mays L. during the autumn planting season 2019 in two sites with soils of different textures. The first site is a loamy texture in one of the fields of the Medhatia Agriculture Division, Babylon Governorate. The second was silty loam by an alluvial mixture in one of the fields of Al-Nouriah Research Station, Ministry of Agriculture located in Al-Nouriah sub-district, Al-Qadisiyah governorate. It was found through the results that the uniformity, efficiency, and adequacy of the irrigation efficiency of the sprinkler irrigation method is better than that of the sprinkler irrigation method, and it ranged between (88.6-88.7) for uniformity and (84-86)% of the irrigatio
... Show MoreThis work represents development and implementation a programmable model for evaluating pumping technique and spectroscopic properties of solid state laser, as well as designing and constructing a suitable software program to simulate this techniques . A study of a new approach for Diode Pumped Solid State Laser systems (DPSSL), to build the optimum path technology and to manufacture a new solid state laser gain medium. From this model the threshold input power, output power optimum transmission, slop efficiency and available power were predicted. different systems configuration of diode pumped solid state laser for side pumping, end pump method using different shape type (rod,slab,disk) three main parameters are (energy transfer efficie
... Show MoreExplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques enable transparency and trust in automated visual inspection systems by making black-box machine learning models understandable. While XAI has been widely applied, prior reviews have not addressed the specific demands of industrial and medical inspection tasks. This paper reviews studies applying XAI techniques to visual inspection across industrial and medical domains. A systematic search was conducted in IEEE Xplore, Scopus, PubMed, arXiv, and Web of Science for studies published between 2014 and 2025, with inclusion criteria requiring the application of XAI in inspection tasks using public or domain-specific datasets. From an initial pool of studies, 75 were included and categorized in
... Show MoreThe study evaluated the recovery performance of any home herbs group as first aid in some emergency cases. The study involved 10 items of herbs (chamomile, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and anise) which used in acute cases such as cold, colic, inflammation of the intestine and tonsillitis, and (hibiscus, catnip, dried lime, cress seed, and ginger) were used for chronic cases such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis. The results showed the herbs had healing power and efficiency in the primary remedy for the above-mentioned diseases. The side effects, the contradictions, and the overdoses of these substances were discussed. It was concluded that home herbs could be used for treatment in emergency cases until moder
... Show MoreGastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a prevalent clinical condition, that affects millions of individuals worldwide. Objective: To assess the level of soluble HLA-E (sHLA-E) as a biomarker in the diagnosis and immunopathogenesis of GERD patients. Methods: The case-control prospective study included 40 GERD patients who were consulted at the Gastroenterology Unit of AlKindy Teaching Hospital, as along with 40 healthy control subjects. The study period extended from January 2023 to May 2024. Blood was drawn from both groups and serum was separated to assesssHLA-E using a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit. Results: There was a statistically significant difference in sHLA-E levels between GERD patients and healthy cont
... Show MoreThe current study introduces a novel method for calculating the stability time by a new approach based on the conversion of degradation from the conductivity curve results obtained by the conventional method. The stability time calculated by the novel method is shorter than the time measured by the conventional method. The stability time in the novel method can be calculated by the endpoint of the tangency of the conversion curve with the tangent line. This point of tangency represents the stability time, as will be explained in detail. Still, it gives a clear and accurate envisage of the dehydrochlorination behavior and can be generalized to all types of polyvinyl chloride compared to the stability time measured by conventional ones based
... Show MoreIn this work a novel drug delivery system through modification of poly acrylic acid with Methionine as a spacer between the poly acrylic acid which was converted to its acyl chloride and reacted with Methionine as spacer unit which has been reacted with Ampicillin drug. In vitro drug release study had been conducted successfully in basic medium in pH 7.4 and acidic medium in pH 1.1 at 37?. Due to many problems associated with drug release and, this modification could decrease the side effect of drug. The prepared prodrug polymer was characterized by spectra method [FTIR and 1H?NMR]. Physical properties and intrinsic viscosity of drug polymer were determined. The good results were obtained in the presence of spacer unit with compar
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