A Histochemical Study of Testis after Experimentally Induced Varicocele in Rat

Background: Varicocele is probably one of the most controversial subjects in the area of male infertility. Varicocele is de-scribed as the dilation and tortuosity of plexus pampiniformis (especially in the left testis) and leads to some pathological problems in the testis tissue. The stasis of venous blood in the dilated pampiniform plexus impairs arterial blood flow and reduces oxygen supply to testis tissue which can lead to the testicular hypoxia and hyperthermia. Also, oxidative stress and heat stress is known as the main factors in the pathophysiology of varicocele. The adverse effect of such conditions on spermat-ogenesis can cause alterations in sperm concentration, motility, and morphology. Moreover, glycolysis impairment happens by limiting the glucose supply to the tissue. Therefore, the varico-cele affects not only the physiology of testis but also influence the intracellular component. Hence, studies on the association of a varicocele with male infertility are still required to improve our understanding of etiology of varicocele and male infertility. In this study, we aimed to demonstrate the adverse effects of varicocele on testicular histopathology alterations.Materials and Methods: A total of 30 Wistar rats were ran-domly divided into three groups: surgically induced left vari-cocele, sham-operated, and untreated controls. Two months after surgery, animals were euthanized with ether. Then left testes were collected, processed, and stained with Pas and Su-dan Black. For the microscopic study, DinoLite digital lens and Dino Capture 2 Software were used and histological abnormali-ties were evaluated for each testis.Results: The seminiferous tubules were surrounded by a thin, regular basement membrane. While the spermatogonia and spermatocytes were revealed with low cytoplasmic carbohy-drate ratio and the thickened basement membrane in varico-cele-induced rats. Also, our analyses have demonstrated that an increase was observed in the volume of lipid accumulation in spermatogenesis cell lineage of the varicocele-induced group in comparison with the control group.Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that Since normal sper-matogenesis occurs through notable use of carbohydrates as the main source of energy, any disorder in glucose and hexose car-bohydrate transport or metabolism can drive the cells to change principal energy from glucose to lipid. Accordingly, because of inadequate main energy sources, the cells with poor metabo-lisms undergo starvation and consequently cell death.

Keywords:

Histochemistry , Varicocele , Testis , Rat , Seminefiirous Tubules