Température et spermatogenèse chez l'homme : conséquences potentielles d'une hyperthermie modérée des testicules et des épididymes sur l'intégrité du génome des spermatozoïdes

La spermatogenèse chez l'homme et chez les autres mammifères nécessite une température inférieure à la température du corps. Ainsi, une augmentation de la température des testicules produit des effets délétères sur la fertilité masculine. Une réduction de la concentration spermatique, de la mobilité, de la vitalité et de la morphologie des spermatozoïdes a été rapportée chez les animaux et les hommes lorsque le scrotum ou le corps étaient exposés à des températures plus élevées. Dans les modèles animaux, des températures supérieures à la normale entraîneraient des altérations de l'intégrité de la chromatine des spermatozoïdes conduisant à un retard du développement embryonnaire précoce, à une réduction du taux de grossesse et à des fausses couches. Dans ce contexte, nous avons étudié les effets d'une légère augmentation (+2 °C) de la température des testicules et des épididymes sur l'intégrité de la chromatine des spermatozoïdes chez les hommes. Nous avons mené un protocole expérimental chez 5 hommes féconds volontaires induisant une augmentation modérée de la température des testicules et des épididymes en remontant les testicules en position supra scrotale et en les maintenant dans cette position durant 15 heures par jour, pendant 120 jours consécutifs. Les paramètres spermatiques classiques ont été évalués selon les recommandations de l'OMS. L'indice de fragmentation de l'ADN du spermatozoïde (DFI) et la haute colorabilité de l'ADN (HDS) ont été analysés par le test du " Sperm Chromatine Structure Assay " (SCSA) et le test du bleu d'aniline a été utilisé pour évaluer la maturité de la chromatine. Les résultats du SCSA ont montré une augmentation significative du pourcentage de DFI et du pourcentage de HDS du sperme respectivement dès 20 jours (J20) et J34 d'hyperthermie. Les taux de DFI et de HDS sont restés plus élevés pendant les 120 jours d'hyperthermie comparés aux valeurs avant augmentation de la température (valeurs contrôles). Le test du bleu d'aniline a montré une augmentation non significative du pourcentage de spermatozoïdes avec une chromatine immature à J34 d'hyperthermie, atteignant une valeur significative à J73. Cette augmentation est demeurée constante pendant toute la durée d'hyperthermie traduisant un pourcentage de spermatozoïdes avec une chromatine immature supérieur à celui évalué avant hyperthermie. Après l'arrêt de l'hyperthermie, le DFI et le HDS sont revenus à leurs valeurs pré-exposition plus précocement (J73) que le pourcentage de spermatozoïdes avec une chromatine immature (J180). L'indice d'anomalies multiples (IAM) des spermatozoïdes est augmenté dès J9. La mobilité, la numération et la vitalité des spermatozoïdes ont été significativement diminuées par rapport aux valeurs avant hyperthermie, respectivement à partir de J20, J34 et J34 et sont restées diminuées pendant toute la durée de l'hyperthermie. Après l'arrêt de l'hyperthermie, tous les paramètres spermatiques sont revenus aux valeurs contrôles à partir de J73. Nous avons montré, pour la première fois chez l'homme, qu'une légère augmentation de la température des testicules et des épididymes a un effet sur l'intégrité de la chromatine du spermatozoïde avant même la baisse de la numération des spermatozoïdes. Compte tenu des résultats obtenus dans les modèles animaux, les résultats de ce protocole expérimental pose la question des conséquences possibles de l'altération de la chromatine sur le développement embryonnaire alors que les paramètres du sperme ne sont pas incompatibles avec une fécondation au cours de la contraception masculine, durant les phases de récupération et d'inhibition. De plus, nos résultats pourraient être d'intérêt en infertilité masculine, en assistance médicale à la procréation et dans les fausses couches à répétition.In man and other mammals, spermatogenesis is ensured at a temperature lower to body temperature. An increase in temperature has deleterious effects on male fertility. Reduced sperm out put, motility, viability and morphology have been reported in animals and men at higher than normal scrotal or body temperatures. Increased temperature caused alterations in sperm chromatin integrity resulting in retarded early embryo development, reduced pregnancy rates and miscarriages in animal models. In this context, for the first time in men, we investigated the effects of a mild increase (+2 °C) in testes and epididymal temperature on sperm chromatin integrity. We designed an experimental protocol to induce mild testes and epididymal hyperthermia in five healthy fertile volunteers. Testes were lifted up and maintained at supra scrotal position 15 hours daily for 120 consecutive days. Classical sperm parameters were assessed according to World Health Organization (WHO) guidlines. Sperm DNA fragmentation index (DFI) and high DNA stainability (HDS) were analysed by "Sperm Chromatin Structure Assay" (SCSA) and acid aniline blue staining technique was used to assess the sperm chromatin maturity. The results of SCSA showed a significant increase in the percentage of sperm DFI and HDS as early as day 20 (D20) and D34 respectively during hyperthermia which remained higher compared with the values before hyperthermia (controls) during the entire period of hyperthermia. Aniline blue test showed a non-significant increase in the percentage of sperm with immature chromatin as early as D34 during hyperthermia reaching significance at D73 and remained higher than control during the entire period of hyperthermia. After cessation of hyperthermia sperm DFI and HDS returned to the respective control values earlier (D73) than the percentage of aniline blue positive sperm (D180). Multiple anomalies index (MAI) of spermaozoa was significantly increased, compared to control, as early as D9 of hyperthermia and remained increased throughout the entire period of hyperthermia. Sperm motility, count, and viability were significantly decreased compared with the respective controls as early as D20, D34 and D34 respectively during hyperthermia and remained decreased during the entire hyperthermia period. After cessation of hyperthermia all parameters returned to respective control values at D73. We report, for the first time in men, that a mild increase in testes and epididymal temperature largely impaired sperm chromatin integrity before any drop in sperm count. Based on the results from animal models the findings of present experimental protocol raise the question of possible consequences of altered sperm chromatin integrity on embryo development when sperm parameters were compatible with natural fertilization during male contraception particularly during inhibition and recovery phases of spermatogenesis. Moreover, our results may have clinical implications in male infertility, repeated miscarriages as well as assisted reproductive technologies

A Combined Deep Learning and Ensemble Learning Methodology to Avoid Electricity Theft in Smart Grids

Electricity is widely used around 80% of the world. Electricity theft has dangerous effects on utilities in terms of power efficiency and costs billions of dollars per annum. The enhancement of the traditional grids gave rise to smart grids that enable one to resolve the dilemma of electricity theft detection (ETD) using an extensive amount of data formulated by smart meters. This data are used by power utilities to examine the consumption behaviors of consumers and to decide whether the consumer is an electricity thief or benign. However, the traditional data-driven methods for ETD have poor detection performances due to the high-dimensional imbalanced data and their limited ETD capability. In this paper, we present a new class balancing mechanism based on the interquartile minority oversampling technique and a combined ETD model to overcome the shortcomings of conventional approaches. The combined ETD model is composed of long short-term memory (LSTM), UNet and adaptive boosting (Adaboost), and termed LSTM–UNet–Adaboost. In this regard, LSTM–UNet–Adaboost combines the advantages of deep learning (LSTM-UNet) along with ensemble learning (Adaboost) for ETD. Moreover, the performance of the proposed LSTM–UNet–Adaboost scheme was simulated and evaluated over the real-time smart meter dataset given by the State Grid Corporation of China. The simulations were conducted using the most appropriate performance indicators, such as area under the curve, precision, recall and F1 measure. The proposed solution obtained the highest results as compared to the existing benchmark schemes in terms of selected performance measures. More specifically, it achieved the detection rate of 0.92, which was the highest among existing benchmark schemes, such as logistic regression, support vector machine and random under-sampling boosting technique. Therefore, the simulation outcomes validate that the proposed LSTM–UNet–Adaboost model surpasses other traditional methods in terms of ETD and is more acceptable for real-time practices

Proteomic profile mapping and differential expression of protein in ovarian cancer

This study aimed to characterize differentially expressed proteins in malignant ovarian tissue to find out potential novel biomarkers in ovarian cancer (OC). We enrolled 20 ovarian cancer patients (40-65 years) and an equal number of age-matched healthy women to get malignant and healthy ovarian tissue samples for protein extraction and quantification after tissue lysis. The protein profile was analyzed using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Based on the information thus obtained, the proteins were identified using the relevant software and protein databank to analyze the malignant and non-malignant ovarian tissue samples (n = 20/group). In this proteomic analysis of the ovarian tissue, 112 proteins were detected. Based on a minimum of ≥ 1.5-fold expression difference (p-value ≤ 0.05; FDR ≤ 0.05 and PMF ≥ 79), 17 proteins were found to be upregulated while 27 were downregulated in the malignant ovarian tissue. Six of these proteins have not been previously reported in ovarian cancer. Out of these, three are upregulated while the other three are downregulated. The upregulated proteins are centrosomal protein of 290 kDa (Cep290), uncharacterized protein C1orf109 (C1orf109) and GTPase-activating Rap/Ran-GAP domain-like protein 3 (GARNL3), and the three downregulated proteins identified are actin-related protein 3 (ARP3), cytosolic carboxypeptidase 3 (AGBL3) and NADH dehydrogenase [ubiquinone] 1 alpha subcomplex subunit 10 (NDUFA10). This proteomic mapping not only provides data on protein profiling of ovarian cancer in Pakistani population for the first time but also reports six novel differentially expressed proteins, which have not been previously reported in ovarian cancer patients. They may serve as potential novel biomarkers after further validation for early diagnosis and prognosis of ovarian cancer. It also provides additional data to improve existing knowledge of already reported protein ovarian cancer biomarkers

Physically active men show better semen parameters than their sedentary counterparts

CITATION: Lalinde-Acevedo, P. C., et al. 2017. Physically active men show better semen parameters than their sedentary counterparts. International Journal of Fertility and Sterility, 11(3):156-165, doi:10.22074/ijfs.2017.4881.The original publication is available at http://ijfs.irBackground: The quality of semen depends upon several factors such as environment, life style, physical activity, age, and occupation. The aim of this study was to analyze and compare the conventional and functional semen parameters in men practicing vigorous physical activity to those of sedentary men. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, semen samples of 17 physically active men and 15 sedentary men were collected for analysis. Semen analysis was performed according to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, while functional parameters were evaluated by flow cytometry. Results: Results showed that several semen parameters (semen volume, viability, progressive motility, total motility, normal morphology, and moribund cells) were superior in the physically active group in comparison with the sedentary group. Semen parameters such as viability, progressive motility and total motility, as well as the percentage of moribund spermatozoa were significantly different between both groups. However, sperm DNA damage, lipid peroxidation and mitochondrial potential were not significantly different among the groups. Conclusion: Nevertheless, the physical activity shows better semen parameters than sedentary group. Taken together, our results demonstrate that regular physical activity has beneficial impact in sperm fertility parameters and such a life style can enhance the fertility status of men.http://ijfs.ir/journal/article/abstract/4881Publisher's versio

Catalase-Like Antioxidant Activity is Unaltered in Hypochlorous Acid Oxidized Horse Heart Myoglobin

Activated neutrophils release myeloperoxidase that produces the potent oxidant hypochlorous acid (HOCl). Exposure of the oxygen transport protein horse heart myoglobin (hhMb) to HOCl inhibits Iron III (Fe(III))-heme reduction by cytochrome b5 to oxygen-binding Iron II (Fe(II))Mb. Pathological concentrations of HOCl yielded myoglobin oxidation products of increased electrophoretic mobility and markedly different UV/Vis absorbance. Mass analysis indicated HOCl caused successive mass increases of 16 a.m.u., consistent serial addition of molecular oxygen to the protein. By contrast, parallel analysis of protein chlorination by quantitative mass spectrometry revealed a comparatively minor increase in the 3-chlorotyrosine/tyrosine ratio. Pre-treatment of hhMb with HOCl affected the peroxidase reaction between the hemoprotein and H2O2 as judged by a HOCl dose-dependent decrease in spin-trapped tyrosyl radical detected by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and the rate constant of 2,2′-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid (ABTS) oxidation. By contrast, Mb catalase-like antioxidant activity remained unchanged under the same conditions. Notably, HOCl-modification of Mb decreased the rate of ferric-to-ferrous Mb reduction by a cytochrome b5 reductase system. Taken together, these data indicate oxidizing HOCl promotes Mb oxidation but not chlorination and that oxidized Mb shows altered Mb peroxidase-like activity and diminished rates of one-electron reduction by cytochrome b5 reductase, possibly affecting oxygen storage and transport however, Mb-catalase-like antioxidant activity remains unchanged

Decision-Making Approach under Pythagorean Fuzzy Yager Weighted Operators

In fuzzy set theory, t-norms and t-conorms are fundamental binary operators. Yager proposed respective parametric families of both t-norms and t-conorms. In this paper, we apply these operators for the analysis of Pythagorean fuzzy sets. For this purpose, we introduce six families of aggregation operators named Pythagorean fuzzy Yager weighted averaging aggregation, Pythagorean fuzzy Yager ordered weighted averaging aggregation, Pythagorean fuzzy Yager hybrid weighted averaging aggregation, Pythagorean fuzzy Yager weighted geometric aggregation, Pythagorean fuzzy Yager ordered weighted geometric aggregation and Pythagorean fuzzy Yager hybrid weighted geometric aggregation. These tools inherit the operational advantages of the Yager parametric families. They enable us to study two multi-attribute decision-making problems. Ultimately we can choose the best option by comparison of the aggregate outputs through score values. We show this procedure with two practical fully developed examples

Dual Authentication-Based Encryption with a Delegation System to Protect Medical Data in Cloud Computing

The increasing use of cloud computing, especially in commercial, government and healthcare institutions, started with the use of computerized clouds. Clouds store important data, which reduces the cost of management and ensures easy access. To protect this data, cryptographic methods are used to ensure confidentiality of the data, as well as to secure access to user data and increase trust in cloud technology. In our paper, we suggest a new scheme to support an attribute-based encryption system (ABE) that involves multiple parties such as data owners, data users, cloud servers and authority. A verified and authenticated decryption process for the cloud environment is the imperative feature of our proposed architecture. The data owner encrypts their data and sends it to the cloud. The cloud server performs partial decryption and the final decrypted data are shared for users as per their privileges. Thus, the data owner reduces complexity of productivity by delegating the decryption process to the cloud server. Analysis of the experimental results confirms that data access in the electronic cloud atmosphere is safer due to a controlled multiple-users-rights scheme. Our performance evaluation results show that the proposed model condensed the communication overhead and made Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) more secure

On existence and continuation of solutions of the state-dependent impulsive dynamical system with boundary constraints

Abstract The state-dependent impulsive dynamical system with boundary constraints is a kind of special but common system in nature. But because of the complexity of the geometry or topological structures of the impulsive surface, it is hard to determine when an event or an impulsive surface is reached. Therefore, a general state-dependent impulsive nonlinear dynamical system is rarely studied. This paper presents a class of state-dependent impulsive dynamical systems with boundary constraints. We obtain the existence and continuation of their viable solutions and provide sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of the viable solutions to the system. Finally, two examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the results

Impact of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on Pakistan’s Trade: Empirical Evidence from Gravity Model

Purpose: The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is anenormous project for both economies. There are much potentialremunerations for concerning frugalities in trade and industries of bothcountries. The study was specifically designed to examine the influence ofCPEC on fruits export of Pakistan. The bilateral or regional trade wasexamined through Gravity approach. Data was taken from 2013 to 2015.Since distance plays a vital role in trade, the outcomes of gravity model areestimated with ordinary least square method. Pakistan China EconomicCorridor is a mega project for both economies. It will make Pakistan andChina, the major economic players in the region and further enhanceeconomic conditions of both countries. Some of the basic determinations ofPak-China economic corridor are to boost business opportunities, efficienttransport routes and expanding regional trade. The export target of Pakistanwas $US 20 billion in 2013-2015. As of April 2015, Pakistan exports standat$ US 6,178 billion. Pakistan’s exports to Asia was amounted to $US1,649 billion which was 42 percent of its overall exports and the share offruit and nuts markets in Pakistan’s export was$ US 1,017 billion. Thepaper analyses the CPEC’s impact on exports especially exports from fruitmarket of Pakistan using Gravity Approach for the evaluation of thisbilateral trade. The results show that CPEC reduces the distance and it willbe more beneficial for perishable goods trade like fruits