Testicular toxicity of a commercial polyherbal product in male albino rats

抄録

Background:

　Nigerian masses just like their counter parts elsewhere in other developing countries of the world, especially in Africa rely heavily on herbal medicine for their primary health needs. These commercial herbal medicines most often are neither evaluated for safety nor standardized. The consequencies is always unecessary exposure of the unsuspected members of the public that freely consume these products to health risks.

Method:

In this study, the effect of repeated oral administration of one of such commercial herbal medicine popularly called Nasara Pile Syrup (NPS) on the testicular structure and functions of male albino rats was examined. Low (0.5ml/100g b. wt.), medium (1.0ml/100g b. wt.) and high (1.5ml/100g b. wt.) dose levels of the herbal medicine were administered orally, once daily to three groups of albino rats for 28 days. The forth group received normal saline. All the animals were sacrified on day 29; the testes were excised, weighed and processed for histological analysis while the epidydimis was used for Sperm Count (SC), Sperm Motility (SM) and Sperm Morphology Assessment(SMA).

Results:

　Results showed a non significant (p >0.05) reduction in sperm count of the rats at low dose of the herbal medicine. But at a medium and high doses, there were significant (p < 0.05) decrease in sperm count and sperm motility in the animals. Histopathological examinaion revealed that, the herbal medicine induced severe pathological changes in forms of atrophic seminiferous tubules (ATS), paucity of germinal element (PGE) with most tubules populated by sertoli cells only.

Conclusion:

These findings suggest that, prolong use of high dose of this herbal medicine (NPS) may induce testicular damage resulting in male infertility. The populace must therefore, exercise caution in using this partcular herbal medicine.