Effect Of Local Testicular Heating On Intratesticular Oxidative Stress And Its Relationship With Spermatogenic Cell Apoptosis In Pre-pubertal And Pubertal Rat

Background:An increasing number of reports have suggested a trend toward decreasing sperm quality in men over the past five decades, and more and more people are suffering azoospermia or oligozoospermia. Due to the relatively obvious acceleration of this trend at present, it is believed that declining sperm quality is the result of environmental rather than genetic factors. Temperature as an environmental factor of heat-induced male infertility has been noticed. Several studies have shown that, in most mammals including human being, the testis is always kept at a lower temperature than that in the abdomen, and exposure of the testis to body temperature or above results in increased death of spermatogenic cells. Mild testicular heating has been established as a safe and reversible process for suppression of spermatogenesis. In different growth and development period, it is maybe affected to varied extents by heat stress. Adolescent age is the second crest-time of men's physical development. In this period, secondary sex characters appear, and male generative organs get mature gradually. For not only male physical development but also their genitical gland development is significant, if adolescent testis suffered all kinds of infaust environmental factors, their reproductive function and even individual growth and development would be disturbed. Nowadays, there are more and more male sterile patients, and most of them are discovered in their adulthoods. Nevertheless, some of male infertility may result from certain deleterious stimulus touched by the patients when they are still children or adolescents. With the improvment of medical treatment level today and widely publicized health-protecting education of andriatrics, most adult male have taken better care of their own reproduction health, and thus the younger male infertility is relatively more frequent than ever. In addition, some studies suggested that the one cause of infertility was oxidative damage, active oxygen was an arch-criminal leading to male sterility. Accordingly, the following study was designed to clarify pre-pubertal rat in testicular germ cell apoptosis induced by mild testicular hyperthermia of pre-pubertal and pubertal rat and to reveal the relationship among germ cell apoptosis, oxidative stress and testosterone.