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
To identify and explore the factors nurses perceive as influencing their knowledge acquisition in relation to diabetes care and its management in Saudi Arabia.
Diabetes continues to pose major healthcare challenges despite advances in diabetes management. Nurses have a crucial role in diabetes care, but diabetes knowledge deficits deter effective collaboration with other healthcare providers in educating patients about diabetes self‐management.
An exploratory descriptive qualitative design.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference in mandibular trauma caused by two mechanisms for the delivery of missile injuries: firearms and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The data investigated included sex, age, mechanism of injury, and other clinical and radiographic manifestations. Seventy consecutive patients, predominantly male, with a mean age of 28.6 ± 14 years (range 2–60 years) were enrolled: 38 patients (54.3%) sustained mandibular fractures caused by bullet injuries and 32 patients (45.7%) had mandibular fractures caused by IED explosion injuries. The study revealed that the differences in most of the investigated variables were not statistically significant; the only significant differences were the inci
... Show MoreMembrane distillation (MD) is a hopeful desalination technique for brine (salty) water. In this research, Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD) and Air Gap Membrane Distillation (AGMD) will be used. The sample used is from Shat Al –Arab water (TDS=2430 mg/l). A polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) flat sheet membrane was used as a flat sheet form with a plate and frame cell. Several parameters were studied, such as; operation time, feed temperature, permeate temperature, feed flow rate. The results showed that with time, the flux decreases because of the accumulated fouling and scaling on the membrane surface. Feed temperature and feed flow rate had a positive effect on the permeate flux, while permeate temperatu
... Show MoreCommunication has seen a big advancement through ages; concepts, procedures and technologies, it has also seen a similar advancement of language. What unites language and media is the fact that each one of them guides and contributes to the other; media exists and results from language and from the other sign systems, and what strengthens this connection is the symbolic language system, as media helps it by providing knowledge and information. The change that occurred through time must leave a significant trace in the media, for example Diction, which has changed concerning development and growth, also the ways and mediums of media have become manifold and widespread. This change affected the recipient whether it was a reader, listener o
... Show MoreIt is no secret for those concerned with language concerns that the issue of figurative feminization is one of the issues that does not follow a grammatical rule governed by the fact that the subject of knowledge of this is due to hearing as indicated by linguistic references and lexicons.This research opts to find out the origin of the feminization of the word sun in the Arabic language and in light of what some language specialists have argued that the origin of figurative feminization was due to non-linguistic motives related to religious and metaphysical beliefs, and that it was memory preserved in light of the linguistic heritage.The research concluded that the feminization of the sun goes back to what settled in their minds, which
... Show MoreThe finite element method has been used in this paper to investigate the behavior of precast reinforced concrete dapped-ends beams (DEBs) numerically. A parametric investigation was performed on an experimental specimen tested by a previous researcher to show the effect of numerous parameters on the strength and behavior of RC dapped-end beams. Reinforcement details and steel arrangement, the influence of concrete compressive strength, the effect of inclined load, and the effect of support settlement on the strength of dapped-ends beams are examples of such parameters. The results revealed that the dapped-end reinforcement arrangement greatly affects the behavior of dapped end beam. The failure load decreases by 25% when
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The present study is about tales attributed to certain people and are not traded. Such a study has a great importance for religion scholars and conveyors of hadiths since it is considered as one of the important sources of Islamic legislation that represent the Holy Sunna, and the majority of the recent study is concerned with non-traded tales of religion scholars. The research starts with the definition of such type of tales and then its types, conditions, legality, exceptions, and the benefit from studying such matter. It is mainly concerned with the opinions of the Imami and Hanafi region scholars respectively, and with comparing between the two doctrines i.e. Imami and Hanafi at the end of each
... Show MoreIn this study, ultraviolet (UV), ozone techniques with hydrogen peroxide oxidant were used to treat the wastewater which is produced from South Baghdad Power Station using lab-scale system. From UV-H2O2 experiments, it was shown that the optimum exposure time was 80 min. At this time, the highest removal percentages of oil, COD, and TOC were 84.69 %, 56.33 % and 50 % respectively. Effect of pH on the contaminants removing was studied in the range of (2-12). The best oil, COD, and TOC removal percentages (69.38 %, 70 % and 52 %) using H2O2/UV were at pH=12. H2O2/ozone experiments exhibited better performance compared to
... Show MoreABSTRACT Porous silicon has been produced in this work by photochemical etching process (PC). The irradiation has been achieved using ordinary light source (150250 W) power and (875 nm) wavelength. The influence of various irradiation times and HF concentration on porosity of PSi material was investigated by depending on gravimetric measurements. The I-V and C-V characteristics for CdS/PSi structure have been investigated in this work too.