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
The international financial accounting and reporting standards IFRS/IAS represent the set of rules and foundations that the economic entity must follow in the measurement, presentation, and disclosure of the elements of the financial statements, the implementation of adopting the international financial reporting standards contributes to improving the qualitative characteristics of accounting information, so the current research aims to explain the role of adopting the International Accounting Standard (IAS) in improving the qualitative characteristics as well as analyzing the impact of the adoption of IAS.1 in improving the qualitative characteristics of accounting information within the financi
... Show MoreThe Effect of Chicken Eggshell Extract on Microhardness of Artificially Induced Dental Erosion in Permanent Teeth (In Vitro Study), Shatha A Abbas*, Alhan A Qasim
Sixty urine samples were collected from women with urinary tract infection in different ages. The aims of this study were determined the dominancy of pathogens isolated from urine of women with UTI and evaluating the antibacterial activity of Rosmarinus officinalis L. essential oil against these pathogenic isolates. Identification of bacteria was done on Chromogenic orientation agar while disc diffusion method was used for determination the sensitivity of bacterial isolates to antibiotics and Agar well diffusion method was used for evaluation the antibacterial effect of Rosemary essential oil on these isolates. The results showed that 50% of women infected with Escherichia coli, it was dominants in ages above 15 years old while Staphylococc
... Show MoreThe present study was carried out to investigate the effect of oral administration of hot aqueous extract of beetle cocoon Larinus maculatus Faldermann, in a two doses 50 and100mg/Kg/Bw for 25 and 45days respect- tively on some organs such as liver, lung, kidney, intestine, heart, spleen, and brain in male mice Mus musculus. The results indicated that there were toxicopathological changes in many tissues of experimental animals. Histo -pathological changes was dose and period dependent . It was found that the aqueous extract of beetle cocoon has undesirable effect at the administered doses, since the raw extract of this cocoon is currently being used in Folk medicine as treatment for cough, bronchitis in Iraq. This study revealed that the l
... Show MoreThe Cu2SiO3 composite has been prepared from the binary compounds (Cu2O, and SiO2) with high purity by solid state reaction. The Cu2SiO3 thin films were deposited at room temperature on glass and Si substrates with thickness 400 nm by pulsed laser deposition method. X-ray analysis showed that the powder of Cu2SiO3 has a polycrystalline structure with monoclinic phase and preferred orientation along (111) direction at 2θ around 38.670o which related to CuO phase. While as deposited and annealed Cu2SiO3 films have amorphous structure. The morphological study revealed that the grains have granular and elliptical shape, with average diameter of 163.63 nm. The electrical properties which represent Hall effect were investigated. Hall coeffici
... Show MoreUniversity campuses in Iraq are substantial energy consumers, with consumption increasing significantly during periods of high temperatures, underscoring the necessity to enhance their energy performance. Energy simulation tools offer valuable insights into evaluating and improving the energy efficiency of buildings. This study focuses on simulating passive architectural design for three selected buildings at Al-Khwarizmi College of Engineering (AKCOE) to examine the effectiveness of their cooling systems. DesignBuilder software was employed, and climatic data for a year in Baghdad was collected to assess the influence of passive architectural strategies on the thermal performance of the targeted buildings. The simulations revealed that the
... Show MoreBackground: Many materials were proposed as root canal obturating materials but the biocompatibility issue remains to be a critical one. Propolis has been used as a therapeutic agent since the time of Hippocrates. It is known that propolis exhibits some pharmacological activities, such as antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anti inflammatory activity. Materials and methods: Eighteen albino rats were used in the study and divided randomly into three groups of 6 animals for each group. Each group was scheduled to be sacrificed at different time periods, which were three days, one week and three weeks. Propolis and ZOE sealer implants of 4mm in diameter and 0.5 gm in weight were implanted in the dorsal side of the rats. At the end of the
... Show MoreThe aim of this study was to evaluate the risk factors that influence the perforation, regardless of the presence of H. pylori infection, in a sample of Iraqi patients with peptic ulcers, admitted to Al-Kindy Teaching Hospital. A total of 90 patients who had perforated peptic ulcer participated in this study. The diagnosis was based on history, clinical examination, laboratory and radiological investigations and was confirmed intraoperatively. A number of probable risk factors for perforation were investigated. Eighty participants were males and 10 were females (male to female ratio 8:1). About 42.2% of patients were in their fifth decade of life. Forty-nine (54.4%) patients were asymptomatic be
This research was conducted to measure the safety of heat stable enterotoxin a (STa) produced by enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, through studying its toxic effect on mice since it showed a promising effect in reducing the proliferation of colorectal cancer cells. The cytogenetic effect was determined after giving five different doses (100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600)μg/Kg in comparison with negative (phosphate buffer saline / PBS) and positive (mitomycin C/ MMC, at doses of 2 and 5μg/Kg) controls on mouse bone marrow cells by employing the following parameters: mitotic index, chromosomal aberrations and micronucleus, also, the serum level of liver functional enzymes (GOT, GPT, ALP) was recorded. In addition, lethal dose 50 (LD 50) with cert
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