Evaluation of Histological and Histochemical Altera-tions in Testis Tissue Following Long-term Oral Adminis-tration of Aspartame in Mice

Background: Aspartame is the most famous consuming artifi-cial sweetener that widely used in foodstuffs. Many experimen-tal studies have reported toxicity of long-term administration of aspartame in different organ tissues, whereas little evidence is available on adverse effects of long-term consumption of as-partame on reproductive system. The present study has been conducted in order to evaluation of the effects of aspartame on histological and histochemical parameters in mice.Materials and Methods: The adult male mice were randomly divided into four groups of nine each. In three groups, aspar-tame was administered orally with the doses of 40, 80 and 160 mg/kg.BW respectively for 90 days by gavage. Also a control group was considered. 24 hours after the last treatment, tissue samples were taken and used for histological and histochemical evaluations (Massonʼs trichrome, Alkaline phosphatase, Oil red O, Sudan black B and Periodic acid Schiff stains).Results: Microscopic analyses revealed that long-term admin-istration of aspartame increased thickness of tunica albuginea, edema in subcapsular and interstitial connective tissues, and atrophied seminiferous tubules, arrested spermatogenesis, de-creased Leydig cells/mm2 of interstitial tissue, and causes hy-pertrophy and cytoplasmic granulation of Leydig cells. The car-bohydrate ratio was reduced in first three layers of the germinal epithelium (GE) cytoplasm. The upper layers of the GE series were manifested with low rate of lipid accumulation in cyto-plasm, while the cells which were located in first layers were revealed with higher amount of lipid foci. Also, histochemi-cal changes were observed in testis tissue of 80 and 160 mg/ kg groups.Conclusion: The current study indicated that long-term oral administration of aspartame causes histological and histochemi-cal adverse effects on the testicular tissue which potentially can lead to infertility.

Keywords:

Aspartame , Histology , Histochemistry , Mice