Background: Acyclovir is asynthetic purin nucleoside analog,which has been reported to be very effective against the treatment of herpes simplex and varicella zoster infections. Acyclovir is known to be toxic to gonads, but available literature fails to provide the indepth analyses of damage.The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of Acyclovir on DNA damage and nuclear maturatio...

Drug abuse is associated with epigenetic changes, such as histone modifications and DNA methylation. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of chronic cocaine and heroin administration on global DNA methylation in brain and liver. Male, 8 week old, C57BL/6J mice received heroin in a chronic 'intermittent' escalating dose paradigm, or cocaine in a chronic escalating dose 'bin...

Amplification of Bartonella henselae DNA has been proposed as a diagnostic test for cat scratch disease (CSD). The sensitivities of the following three PCR assays were compared. PCR/rRNA with universal primers amplifies part of the 16S rRNA gene, followed by hybridization with a specific B. henselae probe; PCR/CS and PCR/HSP amplify portions of the gltA and the htrA genes, respectively, each fo...

Background: Prolonged alcohol abuse in men can cause testosterone deficiency and shrinkage of the testicles (testicular atrophy). This can lead to impotence, sterility and ‘feminisation’. When alcohol is broken down in the body, it may also interfere with normal sperm structure and movement. This study was designed to determine the effects of administration of alcohol on sperm quality, sperm ma...

These days randomized-based population optimization algorithms are in wide use in different branches of science such as bioinformatics, chemical physics andpower engineering. An important group of these algorithms is inspired by physical processes or entities’ behavior. A new approach of applying optimization-based social relationships among the members of a community is investigated in this pa...

Immunodeficiency is a severe therapy-limiting side effect of anticancer chemotherapy resulting from sensitivity of immunocompetent cells to DNA damaging agents. A central role in the immune system is played by monocytes that differentiate into macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs). In this study we compared human monocytes isolated from peripheral blood and cytokine matured macrophages and DCs ...

The relationship between human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA in the genital mucosa and serum IgG to HPV-16, -18, and -6 was studied in a cohort of 588 college women. Among women with incident HPV infections, 59.5%, 54.1%, and 68.8% seroconverted for HPV-16, -18, or -6, respectively, within 18 months of detecting the corresponding HPV DNA. Transient HPV DNA was associated with a failure to seroconver...