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
60 patients diagnosed as having urticaria were included in the study ; 30 patients were effected with acute urticaria and 30 patients were affected with chronic urticaria. In addition, 30 healthy adult volunteers were selected as control group .The patients and control groups sera were examined with enzyme linked immunosorbent assay ( ELISA) to detect total level IgE and radial immunodiffusion (RID) to detect levels of IgG , IgA and IgM . The total level of IgE in acute urticaria ( 1.45±0.13) IU/mL and chronic urticaria (2.12 ± 0.10) IU/mL patients were significantly higher than the control groups ( 0.85 ± 0.10)IU/mL (p<0.05). The level of IgG in acute urticaria ( 12.5± 0.42) g/L and chronic (13.16±0.40) g/L patients , IgA in acute (2.
... Show MoreNowadays, cloud computing has attracted the attention of large companies due to its high potential, flexibility, and profitability in providing multi-sources of hardware and software to serve the connected users. Given the scale of modern data centers and the dynamic nature of their resource provisioning, we need effective scheduling techniques to manage these resources while satisfying both the cloud providers and cloud users goals. Task scheduling in cloud computing is considered as NP-hard problem which cannot be easily solved by classical optimization methods. Thus, both heuristic and meta-heuristic techniques have been utilized to provide optimal or near-optimal solutions within an acceptable time frame for such problems. In th
... Show MoreIn this work an experimental study is performed to evaluate the thermal performance
of locally made closed loop solar hot water system using a shell and helical coiled tube
heat exchanger as a storage tank. Several measurements are taken include inlet and outlet
temperatures of both collectors and supply water and temperature distribution within the
storage tank. This is beside the water flow rate in both collectors and load cycle. The
main parameters of the system are obtained.
Background: Worldwide gastric cancer is the fifth most common cancer with poor prognosis. In early stages, it is hard to distinguish gastric cancer from benign gastric diseases, resulting in delayed diagnosis. There is a need to develop a biomarker for differentiating between gastric cancer and benign gastric diseases. Serum cholinesterase is synthesized in liver and released into plasma, and it has an important role in oncogenesis.
Objectives: To determine the correlation between serum cholinesterase activity and gastric cancer, in comparison to benign gastric diseases.
Subjects and Methods: A case control study carried out at Medical City Direct
... Show MoreApplying a well-performing heat exchanger is an efficient way to fortify the relatively low thermal response of phase-change materials (PCMs), which have broad application prospects in the fields of thermal management and energy storage. In this study, an improved PCM melting and solidification in corrugated (zigzag) plate heat exchanger are numerically examined compared with smooth (flat) plate heat exchanger in both horizontal and vertical positions. The effects of the channel width (0.5 W, W, and 2 W) and the airflow temperature (318 K, 323 K, and 328 K) are exclusively studied and reported. The results reveal the much better performance of the horizontal corrugated configuration compared with the smooth channel during both melti
... Show MoreIn this paper, a compartmental differential epidemic model of COVID-19 pandemic transmission is constructed and analyzed that accounts for the effects of media coverage. The model can be categorized into eight distinct divisions: susceptible individuals, exposed individuals, quarantine class, infected individuals, isolated class, infectious material in the environment, media coverage, and recovered individuals. The qualitative analysis of the model indicates that the disease-free equilibrium point is asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number R0 is less than one. Conversely, the endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable when R0 is bigger than one. In addition, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine which
... Show MoreRecently, increasing material prices coupled with more acute environmental awareness and the implementation of regulation has driven a strong movement toward the adoption of sustainable construction technology. In the pavement industry, using low temperature asphalt mixes and recycled concrete aggregate are viewed as effective engineering solutions to address the challenges posed by climate change and sustainable development. However, to date, no research has investigated these two factors simultaneously for pavement material. This paper reports on initial work which attempts to address this shortcoming. At first, a novel treatment method is used to improve the quality of recycled concrete coarse aggregates. Thereafter, the treated recycled
... Show MoreThe exponential growth of audio data shared over the internet and communication channels has raised significant concerns about the security and privacy of transmitted information. Due to high processing requirements, traditional encryption algorithms demand considerable computational effort for real-time audio encryption. To address these challenges, this paper presents a permutation for secure audio encryption using a combination of Tent and 1D logistic maps. The audio data is first shuffled using Tent map for the random permutation. The high random secret key with a length equal to the size of the audio data is then generated using a 1D logistic map. Finally, the Exclusive OR (XOR) operation is applied between the generated key and the sh
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