The role of Cetrorelix in preservation of morphological and ultrastructural changes in the germinal epithelium of testicular tissue following Cyclophosphamide-induced toxicity in mice

Abstract

Anticancer drugs used in the treatment of neoplasia have harmful effects on organs with rapid cell division such as testicular tissue. Gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonists may have a preventive effect on spermatogenic defect produced by anticancer drugs such as cyclophosphamide. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the preventive effect of GnRH antagonist (Cetrorelix) on cyclophosphamide-induced toxicity in testicular tissue of mice. For this purpose, 30 adult 6-8 week old male mice were divided into three groups of control (no treatment), treatment 1 (50mg/kg intraperitoneal cyclophosphamide) and treatment 2 (0.25 mg/kg subcutaneous cetrorelix plus 50 mg/kg intraperitoneal cyclophosphamide). The mice were sacrificed 35 days after the last injection of cetrorelix and testicular speciemens were isolated for histomorphological and ultrastructural studies. Histomorphometric studies of the seminiferous tubules in the first treatment group showed significant decrease in the number of sertoli cells and the thickness of germinal epithelium (p <0.05). Ultrastructural study revealed that several intercellular spaces appear between sertoli cells and spermatogenic cells, and also there were a lot of degenerated mitochondria in the sertoli cells. In the second treatment group, conditions were similar to the control group to some extent. These results demonstrated that cetrorelix can protect the germinal epithelium of testis to some extent against side effects of cyclophosphamide.

Keywords

• testis
• cyclophosphamide
• cetrorelix
• mouse