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
In this paper, the ability of using corn leaves as low-cost natural biowaste adsorbent material for the removal of Indigo Carmen (IC) dye was studied. Batch mode system was used to study several parameters such as, contact time (4 days), concentration of dye (10-50) ppm, adsorbent dosage (0.05-0.25) gram, pH (2-12) and temperature (30-60) oC. The corn leaf was characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy device before and after the adsorption process of the IC dye and scanning electron microscope device was used to find the morphology of the adsorbent material. The experimental data was imputing with several isotherms where it fits with Freundlich (R2 = 0.9
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the study including isolation and identification of candida spp causing UTIs from patintes coming to al-yarmouk hospital
ANN modeling is used here to predict missing monthly precipitation data in one station of the eight weather stations network in Sulaimani Governorate. Eight models were developed, one for each station as for prediction. The accuracy of prediction obtain is excellent with correlation coefficients between the predicted and the measured values of monthly precipitation ranged from (90% to 97.2%). The eight ANN models are found after many trials for each station and those with the highest correlation coefficient were selected. All the ANN models are found to have a hyperbolic tangent and identity activation functions for the hidden and output layers respectively, with learning rate of (0.4) and momentum term of (0.9), but with different data
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Background and Objectives: Dyspepsia is a disorder characterized by difficulty in digestion and represents a major health concern. Therefore, it is crucial to identify functional dyspepsia linked to Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). This research aimed to determine the prevalence of H. pylori among patients with dyspepsia and to examine the potential risk factors associated with the infection. Materials and Methods: From August 14th to September 21st, 2024, a total of 105 patients with dyspepsia, who attended the Central Laboratory of Baghdad Medical City Complex (Iraq), were enrolled in this study. Data on nonsteroidal anti-inflam- matory drugs (NSAIDs), smoking, family history, fasting habits and frequent fast food consumption wer
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Chaotic features of nuclear energy spectrum in 68Ge nucleus are investigated by nuclear shell model. The energies are calculated through doing shell model calculations employing the OXBASH computer code with effective interaction of F5PVH. The 68Ge nucleus is supposed to have an inert core of 56Ni with 12 nucleons (4 protons and 8 neutrons) move in the f5p-model space ( and ). The nuclear level density of considered classes of states is seen to have a Gaussian form, which is in accord with the prediction of other theoretical studies. The statistical fluctuations of the energy spectrum (the level spacing P(s) and the Dyson-Mehta (or statistics) are well described by the Gaussian orthogonal ens
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Social reform is the main pillar of the organization of societies. Therefore, all religions and theories were directed to focus on this aspect as the most important element for the development of economic and cultural development. In addition to the analysis and application of the Islamic Sharia, he did not present a theory, but offered real solutions and remedies to the crises in our Arab and Islamic societies alike, despite the criticism directed at him. Z his opinions.
Microalgae present much usefulness for antimicrobial research because of its enormous biodiversity and rapid growth rate. From this study results it is reaveled that Chlamydomonas reinhardtii were isolated from a pond of water in the province of Diwaniyah. The culture supernatants were obtained when extracted with methanol solvent. Antimicrobial activity of extracts was tested for pathogens, and the best inhibition zone obtained was against Candida albicans (32mm), S.aureus (15mm), and to E.coli (9mm). While it showed no effect against both S.epidermidis and Klebsiella spp. Biofilm was formed by all tested isolates with differences in its strength formation. The C. reinhardtii
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