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
With the spread of the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in developing countries for use in domestic cooking with the increase in the expansion and distribution of gas pipelines for residential buildings, the 2002 World Summit focused on sustainable development in clean energy for natural gas (NG) and LPG. The research aims to focus on the important aspects of design sustainability from an environmental point of view to reduce gas leakage, accidents, and explosions that occur socially to expand the distribution of LPG and motivate the consumers to use it instead of natural gas and other fuels, and from an economic point of view to take into account the annual cost and aesthetic imp
Owing to high antibacterial resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, it could be considered as the main reason behind the nosocomial infections. P. aeruginosa has a well-known biofilm forming ability. The expression of polysaccharide encoding locus (pelA gene) by P. aeruginosa is essential for this ability. The purpose of the current research was to determine the biofilm formation in P. aeruginosa isolated from clinical samples and to evaluate the role of the selected PelA gene in biofilm formation using PCR method in Iraqi patients. Results revealed that 24 (96%) isolates were found to have the ability to form biofilm that was remarkably related to gentamicin resistance. Moreover, the pelA gene was found in all biofilm-producers. In c
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The current research focuses on examining the isohyets in a set of (3) climatic maps of Iraq. Two of these maps were published in the Iraq Climate Atlas and the third one was published in an English source about the geography of Iraq. The first map represents the period from 1923-to-1944, the second is for the period from 1961-to-1990, whereas the third represents the period from 1971-to-2000. Comparing among these three maps, it has become clear that there are noticeable changes of rain in Iraq. In the first map, which represents the decade of the twenties, thirties and early forties, Iraq was located between two Isohyet lines (127 mm) in the far south and (1270 mm) in the far north. As for the second map, which represents the sixties,
... Show MoreIn this investigative endeavor, a novel concrete variety incorporating sulfur-2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine modification was developed, and its diverse attributes were explored. This innovative concrete was produced using sulfur-2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine modification and an array of components. The newly created sulfur-2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine modifier was synthesized. The surface texture resulting from this modifier was examined using SEM and EDS techniques. The component ratios within concrete, chemical and physical traits derived from the sulfur-2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine modifier, chemical and corrosion resistance of concrete, concrete stability against water absorption, concrete resilience against freezing, physical and mechanical p
... Show MoreThe applications of hot plasma are many and numerous applications require high values of the temperature of the electrons within the plasma region. Improving electron temperature values is one of the important processes for using this specification in plasma for being adopted in several modern applications such as nuclear fusion, plating operations and in industrial applications. In this work, theoretical computations were performed to enhance electron temperature under dense homogeneous plasma. The effect of power and duration time of pulsed Nd:YAG laser was studied on the heating of plasmas by inverse bremsstrahlung for several values for the electron density ratio. There results for these ca
... Show MoreIndustrial Investment according to Clean Productive methods is an important element in the process of rational use of Economic Resources, and the Iraqi industrial sector relied on traditional production methods; the productive activities in this sector did not take into consideration the environmental dimension, which leads to achieving the optimal use of economic resources, so it was necessary to have new investment trends heading with Clean Production. Therefore, the research is based on the hypothesis that "Clean Production contributes to improving the environment and rational use of Natural Resources." Based on the descriptive - inductive analysis methodology that study of Iraqi industries with Clean Production,
... Show MoreIn this paper we use non-polynomial spline functions to develop numerical methods to approximate the solution of 2nd kind Volterra integral equations. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the applications of these method, and to compare the computed results with other known methods.
Background: Diabetes mellitus and osteoporosis are two common medical disorders that are becoming more common as the population ages. T2DM patients have a higher fracture hazard, having a high BMD, which is primarily due to the raise hazard of falling. Macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) is one of the hematopoietic growth factor family, and It plays an important function in fracture repair by attracting stem cells to the fracture site and influencing the production of hard calluses by promoting osteoclast genesis.Aims of study: The purpose of this research was to assess the blood level of macrophage colony-stimulating factor in Iraqi osteoporotic patients with and without type 2 diabetes. in addition, that M-CSF may be a predictiv
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