Opioid peptides have been reported to have important functions in human reproduction. Indeed, very high concentrations of enkephalins and their degrading enzymes have been reported in human semen. In the present paper, we compare the activity of two enkephalin-degrading enzymes, aminopeptidase N and neutral endopeptidase 24.11, in different fractions of semen from normozoospermic, fertile men a...

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate seminal plasma coenzyme Q10 levels and oxidative stress in patients with different types of male infertility. Materials and Methods: The study took place in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Medicine, Al-Nahrain University- Baghdad-Iraq from the period of November 2004 till July 2006. Sixty patients with male infertility w...

To illustrate the influence of kallikrein on the hypoosmotic swelling test, 84 human semen samples were classified into 4 groups: normospermia (n = 34, group A), oligospermia (n = 18, group B), asthenospermia (n = 8, group C), and oligoasthenospermia (n = 24, group D). Two aliquots of 0.45 ml were prepared from each specimen in all the groups: one was incubated for 3 hr in a glass tube containi...

A Hermitian metric on a complex manifold of complex dimension n is called astheno-Kähler if its fundamental 2-form F satisfies the condition ∂∂F n−2 = 0 and it is strong KT if F is ∂∂-closed. We prove that a conformally balanced astheno-Kähler metric on a compact manifod of complex dimension n ≥ 3, whose Bismut connection has (restricted) holonomy contained in SU(n), is necessarily Kähler. We p...

background: the lipid peroxides and their degradation products are highly toxic to spermatozoa and may play a major role in sperm dysfunction. the purpose of this study was to determine the level of lipid peroxidation as indicated by malondialdehyde (mda) in the spermatozoa and seminal plasma of asthenozoospermic and normozoospermic males. in addition, correlation of lipid peroxidation with mot...