Background: Although semen analysis is a basic method to evaluate male fertility, there was a certain deviation between the semen examination and the actual situation in clinical application. Objective: To evaluate the application value of semen examination items in the diagnosis of male infertility. Method: Males recruited from the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University from June 2017 to December 2018 were divided into three groups: normal fertility group, physical examination group (premarital physical examination), and male infertility group. Each group received the following examination such as semen analysis (including semen volume, sperm concentration, progressive motility, total motility, round cell concentration), acrosin activity, and sperm morphology. All the semen analysis items mentioned above were operated according to the WHO laboratory manual for the examination and procession of human semen (Fifth edition) and related documents. Results: The normal fertility group and physical examination group showed significantly higher levels in sperm concentration, progressive motility, total motility, and sperm morphology than those in the male infertility group (P P < 0.001. The percentage of patients having all qualified items in each group was 28.13%, 6.67%, and 6.51% separately. Conclusion: The diagnosis efficiency was higher in sperm concentration, progressive motility, total motility, and sperm morphology than in other semen examination items. A more objective and efficient method of semen examination should be explored to facilitate the diagnoses of male infertility in the future.
To explore the differences of male semen parameters in different seasons of the year, so as to explore the potential climatic factors affecting spermatogenesis and male reproductive ability, we retrospectively analyzed 21,715 semen analysis data from January 2018 to February 2021, grouped by year and season, and finally the relationships among semen parameters and semen and meteorological parameters were compared. Environmental exposures prior to 3 months were analyzed and correlation analysis was performed.The semen concentration decreased year by year (p
Background: It has been reported that cellphone radiation (CR) is related to higher risk of many health problems, but whether CR can impair the expression of rate-limiting enzymes of testosterone synthesis has seldom been studied. Objective: To evaluate the effects of CR on the expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) in the testes tissue and the sperm quality of adult male mice. Methods: Forty 3-month-old male mice, 22 - 26 g, were randomly assigned into four equal groups (n = 10 per group): the control group and three CR exposure groups including 8-hour group, 16-hour group and 24-hour group. Each mouse received different dosages of CR exposure for seven consecutive weeks. Semen in the epididymis, intratesticular testosterone (ITT) concentrations, and the expression of StAR were measured at the end of experiment. Results: The sperm number and motility, and the ITT concentrations in 24-h group were significant lower than those in the control group (P 0.05). Similarly, only the expression of StAR in the 24-h group was significantly decreased after the exposure of CR (P 0.05). Conclusions: High dose exposure of CR can reduce the expression of StAR and ITT concentration, and then suppress the serum quality.
Objective: To evaluate the effects of bisphenol A (BPA) on testosterone levels and sexual behaviors of male mice. Methods: Forty 12-week-old male mice, 22 - 25 g, were randomly allocated into four equal groups (n = 10 per group): the control group and three BPA exposure groups including low concentration group (10 mg/kg), middle concentration group (50 mg/kg) and high concentration group (100 mg/kg). Each mouse received BPA intraperitoneally injected for 21 consecutive days. Sexual behaviors and testosterone levels in serum and interstitial tissue of testis were measured after the last administration of BPA. Furthermore, we also observed the weights of sexual organs of each group, including testis, epididymis and seminal vesicle. Results: The mount latency in the high concentration group, the intromission latency in the middle and the high concentration group were 11.64 ± 2.67 min, 20.28 ± 3.40 min and 20.13 ± 2.06 min respectively. All of them were longer than the control group (all P < 0.05). The mount frequency, intromission frequency and copulatory efficacy in the high concentration group were 0.52 ± 0.15 numbers/min, 0.37 ± 0.12 numbers/min and 0.40 ± 0.03, which were all statistically lower than the control group (all P < 0.05). The average testis weights in the low, middle and high concentration group were 0.198 ± 0.032 g, 0.203 ± 0.037g and 0.183 ± 0.032 g, and the relative testis weight in the high concentration group was 0.637 ± 0.106. All of these data were lower than the control group (P < 0.05, P < 0.05, P < 0.01 and P < 0.05, respectively). The epididymis weight and the relative epididymis weight, the weight of seminal vesicle and the relative weight of seminal vesicle were 0.069 ± 0.010 g, 0.242 ± 0.040, 0.219 ± 0.042 g and 0.760 ± 0.143, and all of them were lower than the control group (all P < 0.05). The serum testosterone levels in the high concentration group, the intratesticular testosterone levels in the middle and the high concentration group were 7.88 ± 1.62 ng/ml, 75.5 ± 7.18 ng/g and 73.00 ± 9.57 ng/g, which were all lower than the control group (all P < 0.05). Conclusions: BPA can decline the testosterone levels in mice and inhibit their sexual behaviors.
When building models for action recognition, 3D convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are commonly used. However, 3D CNNs also increase the model parameters significantly. We propose two methods, image segmentation and dynamic sampling learning to reduce network parameters and required memory access. Using image segmentation to keep the location of the action and remove the background of each image reduces the size of the feature map. Dynamic sampling learning allows the model to learn from low sampling rates without adding additional parameters, and to maintain performance while reducing the number of images. In order to implement the overall model in hardware for edge devices, we limit the kernel sizes of the 2D convolution layers and 3D convolution layers in the model to only 3x3 and 3x3x3 respectively. We perform experiments on HMDB51 [1] and UCF101 [2] datasets respectively with our proposed model. The accuracy of our proposed method achieve 7.2% and 5.9% reduction compared with DS-GRU2021 [3]. However, the number of parameters of our model is 30% fewer and execution speed x180 faster than DS-GRU2021 [3].
Propylthiouracil (PTU) is an anti-thyroid drug. However, the direct effects of PTU on the endocrine functions of non-thyroid glands are unclear. In the present study, we examined the acute effects of PTU on testosterone secretion in monkeys. Male monkeys were infused intravenously with PTU for 30 min. Blood samples were collected at several time intervals. Monkey testicular interstitial cells were cultured with PTU, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), or forskolin, at 34 degrees C for 1 h. In another study, steroidogenesis in monkey testicular interstitial cells were examined. PTU decreased plasma testosterone but not plasma thyroxine (T4) and luteinizing hormone (LH) levels in monkeys. Administration of PTU resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of basal and hCG-, as well as forskolin-stimulated testosterone release by monkey testicular interstitial cells. PTU also diminished the stimulatory effects induced by androstenedione. These results suggest that PTU inhibits testosterone secretion via a mechanism independent of the secretion of T4 and LH in primates. The inhibitory mechanism of PTU on testosterone production involves a decreased activity of 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (17beta-HSD) and post-cAMP pathways.
Background: Cellphone radiation (CR) has been reported to be related to higher risk of many health problems, but if CR can impair sexual behavior and testosterone synthesis has seldom been studied. Objective: To evaluate the effects of CR on testosterone and luteinizing hormone (LH) levels and sexual behaviors of male mice. Methods: Forty 3-month-old male mice, 22 - 25 g, were randomly allocated into four equal groups (n = 10 per group): the control group and three CR exposure groups including 8-hour group, 16-hour group and 24-hour group. Each mouse received different dose of CR exposure for 30 consecutive days. Sexual behaviors and testosterone and LH levels in serum were measured at the end of experiment. Furthermore, we also observed the weights of reproductive organs of each group, including testis, epididymis and seminal vesicle. Results: The mount latency and intromission latency in 24-hour group were significant higher than the control (both P 0.05). No difference in ejaculation latency existed among each group after the experiment (all P > 0.05). The frequency of mount and intromission in 24-hour group was statistically significantly lower than that of the control group (P 0.05). Only the copulatory efficacy in the 24-hour group was statistically lower than the control group (P 0.05). After the exposure of CR, the changes in the weights of sexual organs in the 24-hour group were significant compared with the control (testis weights, relative testis weight, epididymis weight, the weight of seminal vesicle, and the relative weight of seminal vesicle, all P < 0.01; the relative epididymis weight, P < 0.05). Conclusions: High dose exposure of CR can decline the testosterone and LH levels in mice and inhibit their sexual behaviors.