History and Objectives: vasectomy is one of the prevalent method approved by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education for prevention of male reproductive competency. Due to discrepancies in the reported cases of the effect of vasectomy on the testicular tissue of human and animal models, in order to determine the long term affected of vasectomy on the general appearance and histology of testicular tissue, the present study was carried out in Tarbiat Modares university in 1995.

Materials and Methods: An experimental study on 14 Wistar rats was performed. They were randomly divided equally into 2 vasectomy and shame operated groups: A bilateral surgery was performed on all rats. Changes in the testicular tissue were assessed by taking histologic samples (With hematoxillin-eosin, PAS and trichrome mission staining) 6 months after the surgery. Weight and volume of testis, seminiferous tubule diameter, epithelium thickness of seminiferous tubule, testicular volume percentage and number of epithelial germinal sertoli cell of seminiferous tubule were recorded. Data gathered from 2 groups was compared and statistical analysis was done.

Results: vasectomy induces changes in increased folding of membrane of seminiferous tubule, vacuolization of epithelium seminiferous tubule and desquamation of immature germ cells, in vasectomized group. Comparison of the changes of variables under investigation in 2 groups indicates that there is a significant difference between the 2 groups. Testicular weight (1.2±0.2 in vasectomized group compared to 1.5±0.2 g in control group), testicular volume (1.1±0.2 cm³ compared to 1.4±0.2 cm³) (P<0.0005), seminiferous tubular thickness 225±53 micron compared to 78±15.1 micron) (P<0.0001) showed significant reduction. In addition, testicular volume percentage and number of germ cells in 2 groups showed significant difference (P<0.0001). However, number of sertoli cells did not changed significantly.

Conclusion: Vasectomy induces significant changes in the rat testicular tissue which further study is required to elucidate the underlying mechanism and extrapolation of the results to humans.

History and Objectives: Every day a significant number of people are afflicted with burns and some of them die due to the extreme severity of lesions. Burns are commonly encountered in developing countries. Therefore the purely herbal fundermol ointment was formulated and produced in Iran for wound healing and reduction in mortality in these patients. This study was performed in order to determine the effect of this ointment on wound healing, hypertrophic scar formation and mortality in burned rats.

Materials and Methods: This interventional-experimental study was performed on male rats by producing a full-thickness (Third degree) burn in 20% of their body surface area by immersion of their shaved dorsal aspects in boiling water for 8 seconds. 24 hours after burn, fundermol ointment and sulfadiazine cream were topically applied. Wound healing was evaluated in these two groups and the control group. Wound healing was assessed by the percentage of healing the elapsed time before complete improvement and the frequency of hypertrophic scar formation.

Results: It took 48 days for the rats in the fundermol group (Group I) to show complete healing, this time was 68 (P<0.001) and 56 (P<0.005) days in the control and silver sulfadiazine (Group II) groups, respectively. More degrees of wound healing were observed in group I than the other ones. On the 39th day after the burn, 83%, 92% and 99% for the wounds were healed in the rats in the control group, group II and group I respectively (P<0.05). Rats in group I showed 6.5% more weight loss than those in group II (P<0.01). Hypertrophic scar was also less commonly observed in group I than group II.

Conclusion: Fundermol ointment is an effective medication for treatment of burn wounds. Further investigation in order to find out the mechanism of its effect is recommended.

History and Objectives: Due to the prevalence and importance of diagnosis of fungi in Iran and considering the difficulties and the economic cost of providing different stains and culture media, the present study was undertaken.

Materials and Methods: A descriptive study on 10 strains of fungi including opportunistic, dermatophytes and yeast were performed. The effects of culture media and staining techniques were studied on the modified water agar, saboraud’s agar, mycobiotic agar, corn meal agar, nutrient agar with methods of Riddle, Microslide, Hole making, Scotch tape, Gram, Giemsa, Wright Giemsa, PAS, Wright, Lactophenole catton blue, Kinyoun’s acid fast, Methylene blue, Calcofour white, Congo red and Acridine organ.

Results: The present study showed that Sepedonium, Trichotheclum, Microsporum gypseum, Candida albicans, Aspergillus fungi were etiologic agents in the modified water agar and in the microslide, epidermophyton fluccosum modified water agar and Trichophyton mentagrophyton in Riddle method were grown better than other procedures.

Conclusion: Due to the results of the present study, both Gram and Giemsa stains were better than other staining techniques and water agar is selective medium for better identification of fungi.

History and Objectives: Considering the incidence of osteoarthritis and its known complications and significance of its etiology and the relationship between articular cartilage and its occurrence and lack of a histopathologic study based on radiologic scoring, this study was conducted to determine the relationship between the thickness of articular cartilage and intensity of osteoarthritis in referrals of Maabari hospital and Forensic medicine center in Tehran in 2000.
Materials and Methods: The case-control strategy of this study was carried out on 30 patients with fracture of femur neck and having total hip arthroplasty. For control group, 5 samples of femur head were collected from normal individuals. Samples were fixed in 10% formalin and then sliced into 6 segments. Therefore, radiological examination was performed and according to Jeffery and Meachim methods were scored into normal and grades 1-4. After decalcification, two mid-coronal sections were done on each segment and through dehydrating and blocking in paraffin, they were stained by hematoxylin and eosin. For measurement of thickness of articular cartilage, an ocular graticule (#18) was used. For statistical analysis, t-test was applied.

Results: This study was performed on 5 samples of femur head of normal cadavers with an average age of 26.4±2.7 and 30 patients including 20 cases with fracture of femur neck and 10 cases with osteoarthritis and have undergone a surgical operation. Thickness of femur head was less in patients with osteoarthritis compared to control group. There was no significant difference between case and control groups regarding anterior portion of femur head. Thickness of cartilage in middle and posterior portions in control group was 2.12±0.55 (0.52±0.83 according to scoring, P<0.05) and 1.47±0.42 (0.66±0.81 according to scoring, P<0.01) respectively.

Conclusion and Recommendations: Thickness of articular cartilage, especially in upper and posterior portions of femur head is less in patients with osteoarthritis than is in normal individuals. Therefore, it is recommended to conduct research study to determine the value of radiological findings in diagnosis of changes in the thickness of articular cartilage on a histological basis and use of devices to reduce pressure in upper and posterior portions of femur head.

Background: Fluvoxamine is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor,considering the importance of this drug in treating nervous disease such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, bulimia nervousa,panic disorders and depression, lts side effect on the endocrine axis are very importante. In the present research the effect of fluvoxamine on the concentrations of LH,FSH, testosterone and spermatogenesis was studied.

Materials and Methods: The experiments were done on 50 male wistar rats. The control group received nothing while the sham groups were given 0.05ml of ethanol dissolved in 0.15 ml of distilled water. The experimental group was injected 15, 30, 60mg/kg of drug intraperitoneally for 14 days. Blood samples were taken at 14th day and concentrations of lutein hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and testosterone were measured by RIA method. In addition, at the 14th day the testis was separated and histological changes were studied among experimental, control and sham groups. The results were evaluated using ANOVA and Duncan test.

Results: The results indicated that the concentration of testosterone significantly decreas at high doses of fluvoxamine in comparison to the control group. No significant change was observed in the concentration of LH and FSH in experimental groups. Spermatogenesis chain did not show significant difference in the experimental group compared with the control group.

Conclusion: According to our findin's fluvoxamine may decreases the concentration of testosterone through lowering LH receptors in leydig cells.

Background : Cetirizine is an antihistaminic drug and inhibits nitric oxide production which itself inhibits steroidogenesis. The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of cetirizine on the concentration of steroidal hormones testosterone, FSH and LH and spermatogenesis.

Materials and Methods: Fifty adult male Wistar rats were divided into five groups of ten. All the groups were kept under daily dark and light cycle conditions. These groups included control group (receiving water and food), sham group (receiving distilled water as drug solvent) and three experimental groups (receiving 20, 40, 80 mg/kg/B.W of cetirizine orally). After 28 days, blood samples were taken from the rats to measure the serum concentrations of testosterone, FSH, and LH hormones using RIA method. In addition, tissue sections of the rats' testes were stained to find out histological changes during the experiment. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out using ANOVA and DUNCAN tests.

Results : The results obtained from this study indicated that the concentration of testosterone in the blood of the experimental rats increased relatively (p ≤ 0.05), but no significant changes have been observed in the concentrations of LH and FSH hormones during the experiment.

Conclusion: It can be concluded that cetirizine probably increases the concentration of testosterone due to increasing LH receptor in leydig cells. On the other hand, the results obtained from the histological studies showed that cetirizine has affected neither sertoli nor leydig cells and spermatogenesis.