A growing body of research indicates that testosterone influences spatial cognition in male rats; however, the overwhelming majority of studies have been conducted on tasks motivated by either food deprivation or water escape. The hippocampus-dependent version of the Y-maze task, which characterizes spatial recognition memory, capitalizes on the propensity of rats to gravitate toward novel spat...

OBJECTIVE To compare the efficacy of lycopene plus orchidectomy with orchidectomy alone in the management of advanced prostate cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS Fifty-four patients with histologically confirmed metastatic prostatic cancer (M1b or D2) and a performance status of 0-2 (World Health Organization) were entered into the trial between March 2000 and June 2002. The trial comprised two tre...

BACKGROUND Androgen deprivation therapy is the first-line systemic treatment of prostate cancer, orchidectomy remaining the most common mode in view of cost-effectiveness and better compliance. Accelerated bone loss is common after orchidectomy, which exacerbates osteoporosis already common in this patient-population. We studied the need of periodic measurement of bone mineral density after orc...

Semen collected immediately before or soon after therapeutic unilateral orchidectomy from 86 men with germinal tumours of the testis was analysed. The mean sperm count was 65.6 +/- SEM 10.3 X 10(6) per ejaculate. This was significantly different from that in a control population, in whom the mean was 165.2 +/- 12.9 X 10(6) per ejaculate. The difference appeared to be due to a subpopulation of 3...

Abdominal field blocks are commonly used as part of multimodal analgesia for post-operative pain relief in patients undergoing abdominal surgery. Conventionally, transversus abdominis plane block is used, but has the disadvantage of limited spread only to T10-T12 segments, providing only partial pain relief. The new quadratus lumborum (QL) block has the advantage of providing wider sensory bloc...

The thymus is a crossroad between the immune and neuroendocrine systems. As such, it is innervated by acetylcholinesterase (AChE)-positive fibres of the vagus, the recurrent laryngeal and the phrenic nerves. It is well know, that the innervations density of the thymus increases with age. In our study, adult rats were orchidectomized (surgically and chemically by the application of a luteinizing...