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 of kinetics investigation of the solution free radical polymerization of isopropylacrylamide (IPAM) initiated with potassium persulfate (PPS) was conducted. The reactions were carried out at constant temperature of 60 °C in distilled water under unstirred and inert conditions. Using the well-known conversion vs. time technique, the effects of initiator and monomer concentration on the rate of polymerization (Rp) were investigated over a wide range. Under the conditions of our work, the orders 0.38 and 1.68 were found with respect to initiator and monomer, respectively. However, the rate of polymerization (Rp) is not straight forwardly corresponding monomer concentration. The value 46.11 kJ mol1 was determined as the o
... Show Moreformation constants for the conrdination of aniline pyridine dimethyl sulfoxide dimethyl formamide ethanol dimethylamine have been determined the cordination
The study included the determination of pollen grains features for 8 genera and 13 taxa of Mimosoideae subfamily grown in Baghdad/ Iraq by using each of light and scanning electron microscope. The samples of taxa were collected from various sites in Baghdad province in central Iraq located on 32 45° 0-33 45 0 N and 44 0 0- 44° 45 0 E. the results from this study revealed different pollen types as monad in each of Leucaena, Prosopis, and Neltuma, tetrad in Mimosa and polyads in Acacia, Albizia, Calliandra, Pithecellobium and Vachellia. Each taxa of these genera characterized by special palynological features as shape, size, number of polyads grain and conplateuration as well as other parameters included other dimensions, and these
... Show MoreTen isolates were collected from different clinical sources from laboratory in medicine century . These isolates were belonging to the genus Salmonella depending on morphological and biochemical tests . The antibiotic scussptibility tests against 10 antibiotics were examined , and it was found that the 60% isolates have multiple resistant to antibiotic ,(70%) of isolates were resistant to ampicillin,(50%) were resistant to augmentin ,(40%) were resistant to ceftriaxone ,(20%) were resistant to cefotaxime and (10%) were resistant to ciprofloxacin and tetracycline while all isolates showed sensitivity to piperacillin, imipenem, amikacin and erythromycin .The ability of Salmonela isolates to produce ?-lactamase enzymes were tested usin
... Show MoreIn this research work an attempt has been made to investigate about the Robustness of the Bayesian Information criterion to estimate the order of the autoregressive process when the error of this model, Submits to a specific distributions and different cases of the time series on various size of samples by using the simulation, This criterion has been studied by depending on ten distributions, they are (Normal, log-Normal, continues uniform, Gamma , Exponential, Gamble, Cauchy, Poisson, Binomial, Discrete uniform) distributions, and then it has been reached to many collection and recommendations related to this object , when the series residual variable is subject to each ( Poisson , Binomial , Exponential , Dis
... Show MoreIn this research was study the effect of increasing the number of layers of the semiconductor films as PbS on the average grain sizes and illustrate the relationship between the increase in the average grain size and thickness of the membrane, and membrane was prepared using the easy and simple and does not need the complexity of which is that the chemical bath , and from an X-ray diffraction found that the material and the installation of a random cubic and when increasing the number of layers deposited note the emergence of a number of vertices of a substance and PbS at different levels but the level is more severe (200) as well as the value is calculated optical energy gap and found to be not affected by increase thickness and from th
... Show MoreThe aim of this study was to identify the depth of the mouth and its shape in some local fish belonging to the Cyprinidae family, and the extent to which the depth of the mouth is related to the way of feeding and the nature of food as well as the feeding habits of those species collected specifically from the Tigris River, the results showed a relationship of depth oral cavity with head length was highly significant at (P < 0.01) for all studied species. Also, there was a highly significant relationship between the height of the pharyngeal tooth-bearing bone and the depth of the oral cavity for fish of this local family.