Investigation of Herbs with Steroidogenic and Aphrodisiac Activities for their Potential Application in the Sustainable Management of Reproduction
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Kaphle, Krishna
DOI
en-US
Abstract
Sustainable management of reproduction is an area of major concern in humans and animals. Ironic as it is for the moment in the human plan for future they envision reduction in human numbers but want the domestic and wild animals to increase. Rapid urbanization, depleting natural buffering system, unhealthy lifestyle in humans are all contributing to poor prospect of enjoying reproductive bliss to its most. While, for the part of our cousins in the animal world, intensification in raising or habitat loss is ruining their prolific potentiality. Equipped with technological and scientific knowledge humans are pursuing for solutions. Debatable but lets hope unintended misuse and misguided information about synthetic approaches like in hormones and other drugs do leaves room for concerns. Suitable and softer approaches as envisioned in the proposed Sustainable Medicine (SM) looks promising and worthy of gradual incorporation. Herbs and acupuncture do provide one such option and has been in use and promoted as Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).
Herbs with phytoestrogenic and steroidogenic capability are now subjects of detail investigation as preliminary findings reports encouraging results. To seek evidences in scientific platform, scores of medicinal herbs were screened for their potential effect on steroidogenesis in established in vitro cell culture system. Bovine luteal, porcine adrenal and small lab animals’ interstitial and Leydig cells obtained from the testis was used to conduct the experiment. Several medicinal herbs extracts showed various effects (stimulatory, inhibitory or no effect) on three main steroids investigated namely progesterone, cortisol and testosterone. In further detail study to understand the mechanism involved, signal transduction was trace at intracellular level employing several chemical agonists and antagonists. Among the list of several medicinal herbs, Tribulus terrestris L was chosen for in depth analysis in its testosterone synthesizing ability from isolated mice interstitial cells. In vivo experiment was carried out with protodioscin fortified Tribulus terrestris L feeding in young and middle-aged rats to observe their sexual behavior and their level of testosterone in serum and feces. HPLC-EC was use to measure the level of nordarenaline, adrenaline, dopamine from the medial preoptic area (MPOA), bed nucleus of stria terminalis (BSTMA) and mediam amygdal (MEA) pinced out section of the male rat brain parts from the different treatment in the young and middle-aged rats.
We found that TT extract can increase testosterone production and by employing signal transduction tracing studies, we found the effect to be mild gonadotropin-like in action. On our investigation with different sources of TT, the material from Himalayas and commercial extract obtained from Bulgaria had stronger potentiality, while the material obtained from Taiwan did not show any significant effect. Furthermore, in our experiment TT extract countered the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and heating induced stress in the interstitial cells in maintaining the testosterone production ability. The study do establish that TT can in-fact contribute to the synthesis of testosterone by the Leydig cells in the interstitial tissue of the testes and one possible mechanism is by countering the reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), which are detrimental to steroidogenic acute regulatory (StAR) protein. Furthermore, Bulgarian origin TT (TT-B) at higher doses cross-reacted with the enzyme immunoassay system, which demands further examination for possible presence of exogenous steroids or structural similarity of TT saponins to testosterone.
TT-B was subjected to further in vivo experiment to understand if its administration had any impact on the sexual behavior of young (10 weeks) and middle-aged (48 weeks) male rats. Male Long–Evans rats used as experimental subjects and they were place in individual 10-gallon glass aquariums with a sexually receptive female for a test of sexual behavior. Ovariectomized females implanted with 5 mm long estradiol-filled sialistic capsules were brought into behavioral estrous by an injection of 500 μg progesterone 4 h prior to testing. The mount latency (ML), intromission latency (IL), intromission frequency (IF), ejaculation latency (EL), ejaculation frequency (EF) and post-ejaculatory interval (PEI) were observed and recorded in young and middle-aged rats pre and post treatment with five and ten mg/Kg body weight TT-B for four weeks. The finding showed that there was a clear difference in the sexual behavior of the young and middle-aged rats, with performances and T level in serum and feces being remarkably higher in the former. The sexual behavior observation of the old rats showed time and treatment effects for EF, IF PEI, IL in young and middle-aged rats at varying degree of significant differences. In the TT treatment groups, 5 mg showed better performance compared to the higher dose of 10 mg for all but IL parameters. In the middle-aged group of rats EF and IF was significantly improved in the TT treated group over the control at level of p<0.05 and even p<0.01. The finding also revels that there was no significant differences among the different groups in their live weight during the experiment period and wet organ weight in both young and middle-aged rats. Fecal and serum level of testosterone showed some resemblance in reflection of relative level, with treatment group in old rats showing significantly increased level over the control. However, in young rats, there was no difference in the serum testosterone level in either group, while fecal testosterone level was not significantly different in both young and old rats. The testis culture from different animals showed no difference in the basal level, but oLH stimulated cells showed significant (*p<0.05) increase in TT treated groups both in young and old rats. This study hence adds positive evidence to the aphrodisiac effect of TT; it also reports the possibility of employing fecal steroids assay in routine behavioral study with non-invasive approach.
In the process of making EIA diagnostic procedure more integrated, I have assisted fellow students in establishing standard protocol for saliva steroids assay and developing biochips for faster and efficient assay. However, there are still some shortcomings to overcome, and hope EIA system’s integration with biotechnological advancement, linked with advancing techniques of biosensors will enable scientific pursuits like mine more viable. Resources are keys, financing for such projects that aims to understand the concept of scientific incorporation for evidence seeking in traditional knowledge and practices needs encouragements and initiations. Key is to achieve sustainable solutions to human progress in harmony with its surrounding by learning to respect it. Through this work, my intention is to highlight that herbs with steroidogenic and aphrodisiac activities can serve as potential candidates for improving reproduction in sustainable way both for use in humans and animals. However, more and deeper research and clear understanding on the pharmacological and toxicological interactions is necessary before coming to a final strong conclusion.
Subjects
永續醫學
草藥
刺蒺藜
繁殖
睪固酮
性慾
Sustainable Medicine
Herbs
Tribulus terrestris
Reproduction
Testosterone
Aphrodisiacs
Type
thesis