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
This article aims to provide a bibliometric analysis of intellectual capital research published in the Scopus database from 1956 to 2020 to trace the development of scientific activities that can pave the way for future studies by shedding light on the gaps in the field. The analysis focuses on 638 intellectual capital-related papers published in the Scopus database over 60 years, drawing upon a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer. This paper highlights the mainstream of the current research in the intellectual capital field, based on the Scopus database, by presenting a detailed bibliometric analysis of the trend and development of intellectual capital research in the past six decades, including journals, authors, countries, inst
... Show MoreNumeral recognition is considered an essential preliminary step for optical character recognition, document understanding, and others. Although several handwritten numeral recognition algorithms have been proposed so far, achieving adequate recognition accuracy and execution time remain challenging to date. In particular, recognition accuracy depends on the features extraction mechanism. As such, a fast and robust numeral recognition method is essential, which meets the desired accuracy by extracting the features efficiently while maintaining fast implementation time. Furthermore, to date most of the existing studies are focused on evaluating their methods based on clean environments, thus limiting understanding of their potential a
... Show MoreFibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) is a noninflammatory and nonatherosclerotic arteriopathy that is characterized by irregular cellular proliferation and deformed construction of the arterial wall that causes segmentation, constriction, or aneurysm in the intermediate-sized arteries. The incidence of FMD is 0.42–3.4%, and the unilateral occurrence is even rarer. Herein, we report a rare case of a localized extracranial carotid unilateral FMD associated with recurrent transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) treated by extracranial-intracranial bypass for indirect revascularization. The specific localization of the disease rendered our case unique.
Despite efforts to contain and manage the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak which was declared a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), the COVID-19 pandemic still remains a major global challenge. Patients who display the classical symptoms of the infection are easily identified, tested, isolated and monitored. However, many cases of infected asymptomatic patients have been documented. These patients are not easily identified even though many evidences suggest that they can spread the virus to others. How and why these COVID-19 asymptomatic presentations occur remain unclear. The many theories and views are conjectural, and supporting evidences are still needed. In this review, we
... Show MoreVocational education is the basis of contemporary educational movement that aims at satisfying human needs. Societies can develop their human resources via setting programs for the working class as an aspect of the comprehensive national development. Vocational education is the main source of technical cadres the Iraqi labor market requires of the vocational preparatory schools to provide after three years of schooling.
The vocational schools of the governorate of Basra have a number of problems that lead to the lack of proficiency of their graduates. This study is an attempt to identify these problems or obstacles
... Show MoreThe success of the company's strategy depends to a large extent on the success of its functional areas, the marketing Mix makes the company more able to monitor the external environment and the rapid changes related to competitors and customers, as well as the innovation contributes to meet the needs of customers and the requirements of competition and try to find solutions to various problems in Innovation ways, and thus integrated marketing and Innovation efforts in the company towards the design of competitive services to meet the requirements of customers and competition. The research aims to determine how marketing Mix and innovation to design unique and distinct services compared to the competitors, through exporator a sample of en
... Show MoreThe research aims to determine the impact of employees’ retention strategy on organizational memory. This research is historical, descriptive, and analytical. The sample consists of 158 faculty members in five private colleges in Baghdad. The technique used to analyze the data is SEM (Structural Equation Modeling), and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The research concludes that the employees retaining strategy plays a vital role in retaining employees and hence maintains organizational memory. The findings and recommendations of this research assure the administrations of private colleges that employees retention strategy play a vital role in retaining its employee and hence maintains organizational memory. T
... Show MoreSpecial exercises in individual games are an important pillar in learning their basic skills. The aim of the research is to prepare special exercises using tools and their effect on learning the skill of landing with Salto backward tucked to stand - knowing the effect of special exercises using tools and their effect on learning the skill of landing with Salto backward tucked to stand on the horizontal bar. Either the research assumes the existence of significant differences in the pre- and post-tests in learning the skill of landing with Salto backward tucked to stand on the horizontal bar in favor of the post-test. The researchers used the experimental method with a single sample design to suit the research problem, as the researc
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