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
Background : Shoulder pain is a common problem that can pose difficult diagnostic and therapeutic challenges for the family physician It is the third most common musculoskeletal complaint in the general population, and account for 5% of all general practitioners musculoskeletal consults
Objective: To determine the diagnostic performance of ultrasonography compared with the physical examination for detection of rotator cuff tears in painful shoulder syndrome.
Method: Prospective study was done on seventy patients (48 male, 22 female), age ranged between 30-70 years (mean age 50 years), From February 2007 to July 2011, were subjected to comparative study in Al-Kindy teaching hospital with rotator cuff tears, including physical and ul
According to the importance of the conveyor systems in various industrial and service lines, it is very desirable to make these systems as efficient as possible in their work. In this paper, the speed of a conveyor belt (which is in our study a part of an integrated training robotic system) is controlled using one of the artificial intelligence methods, which is the Artificial Neural Network (ANN). A visions sensor will be responsible for gathering information about the status of the conveyor belt and parts over it, where, according to this information, an intelligent decision about the belt speed will be taken by the ANN controller. ANN will control the alteration in speed in a way that gives the optimized energy efficiency through
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Vaccine hesitancy poses a significant risk to global recovery from COVID-19. To date however, there is little research exploring the psychological factors associated with vaccine acceptability and hesitancy in Iraq.
To explore attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination in Iraq. To establish the predictors of vaccine uptake and vaccine hesitancy in an Iraqi population.
Using a cross-sectional design, 7,778 participants completed an online questionnaire exploring their vaccination status, likelihood of infection, perc
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The electrical and thermal performance of a typical single pass hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) air collector is modeled, simulated and analyzed for two selected case studies in Iraq. An improved mathematical thermo-electrical model is derived in terms of design, operating and climatic parameters of the hybrid solar collector to evaluate its important characteristics: collector flow and heat removal factors, PV maximum power point and its temperature coefficient, and overall power and efficiency. Unlike previous PV/T thermal models, the present model is obtained with some additions and corrections in radiation and convection heat coefficients for the top loss and for the air duct with more applicable sky temperature correlation. The well
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This research was conducted under Lath house canopy of a nursery circumstances, Baghdad University for season 2013 in order to study the effect of soak lemon seeds sour orange with different levels of licorice concentrations extract (0, 0.5, 2.5 and 4.5 g/l) for 24 hours in the percentage of germination and some recipes vegetative growth of seedlings .the results outweigh the bitter orange seedlings and focus soak for licorice extract 4.5 g / l significant superiority in most of the traits plant height, leaf number, root length, stem diameter, amounting to 31.077 cm, 14.46 paper / plant, 25.35 cm, 0.52 mm respectively, which showed significant differences for the treatment of comparison which gave lower values. Clear that the licorice ext
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Background: All diseases concerning bone destruction such as osteoporosis and periodontal diseases share common pattern in which the osteoclast cells are absolutely responsible for bone resorption that occurred when osteoclast activity exceeds osteoblast activity. Osteoprotegrin (OPG) considered as novel soluble decoy receptor known as “bone protector†since it prevents extreme bone resorption through inhibition of differentiation and activity of osteoclast by competing for binding site. It binds to receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand (RANKL) and prevent its interaction with receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B (RANK), thus inhibits osteoclast formation. TNF-α is a pro-inflammatory cytokines having
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The purpose of this work is to clarify the effect of the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) on the properties of the galaxy. A photometric study of two galaxies by surface optical measurements techniques and by using'griz filters' was performed. The scientific material that used in this work was obtained from ''SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY'' (DR7), a fuzzy color, contour maps, photometric parameters, and color indices were studied by using surface photometric technique. The work was done by Ellipse task in IRAF (Image Reduction and Analysis Facility) software from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).