Correlation of seminal parameters with serum lipid profile and sex hormones.

The phospholipids and fatty acid composition of sperm are altered under the influence of serum lipids on impaired seminal parameters in infertile men. We studied the correlation of the serum lipid profile and sex hormone results of a group of infertile men with sperm characteristics of 18 infertile men. Semen samples were collected and analyzed. Serum fasted and post-meal glucose levels, insulin, total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, VLDL, triglyceride, FSH, LH, and testosterone measurements were performed. The increased serum VLDL, total triglyceride, and testosterone values were significantly correlated with decreased sperm motility. Serum FSH values were also inversely correlated with normal sperm morphology. The increased VLDL impaired seminal parameters; additionally, increased triglycerides may have deleterious effects on spermatogenesis. Deterioration is related with increased serum VLDL and triglyceride levels.

Effect of age on speech recognition in noise and on contralateral transient evoked otoacoustic emission suppression.

INTRODUCTION: We aimed to study the influence of age, in normal hearing individuals, on: the masking level difference test, the speech recognition in noise test, the transient evoked otoacoustic emissions test, and the contralateral transient evoked otoacoustic emission suppression test. We also aimed to research the effect of age when using these tests to evaluate the central auditory nervous system. METHODS: Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions and contralateral transient evoked otoacoustic emission suppression were measured in all subjects. Subjects also underwent masking level difference and speech recognition in noise tests. RESULTS: We found a decrease in transient evoked otoacoustic emission amplitudes, speech recognition in noise scores and hearing thresholds with age. We also found that higher masking level difference values were associated with lower speech recognition in noise scores and contralateral transient evoked otoacoustic emission suppression values. CONCLUSION: We conclude that decreasing speech recognition in noise scores are associated with decreasing contralateral transient evoked otoacoustic emission supression values. This effect may be related to medial efferent system dysfunction.

Detection of virulence factors of Escherichia coli from children by multiplex polymerase chain reaction.

A total of 161 Escherichia coli (E. coli) strains isolated from children with urinary tract infection (UTI) were analysed for the genes encoding the virulence factors such as pyelonephritis (pap), s fimbriae (sfa), afimbrial adhesin I (afaI), haemolysin (hly), cytotoxic necrotising factor I (cnf I) and aerobactin (aer) by multiplex PCR. Ninety-four E. coli strains were found to carry at least one virulence factor. Therefore, 58.38% of total population was positive for one virulence gene at least. Percentage of genes within the total population for pap, sfa, afaI, hly, cnf I and aer was found as 22.98, 6.21, 9.94, 1.24, 9.94 and 39.75, respectively. Our analysis showed that sfa-pap (p < 0.001); pap-aer, afaI-aer and cnf I-pap (P < 0.05) and hly-sfa (p < 0.01) significantly co-occurred in their respective samples. In the light of these findings, we suggest an important role of pap causing UTI.

Serum paraoxonase activity and phenotype distribution in Turkish subjects with coronary heart disease and its relationship to serum lipids and lipoproteins.

Recently, biochemical studies of paraoxonase in the serum of humans have shown that much of this enzymes' activity is associated with high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and paraoxonase may play a role in lipid metabolism preventing the accumulation of the lipoperoxides. In this study, a possible relationship between coronary heart disease (CHD) and paraoxonase activity were investigated. Serum triglycerides, total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and paraoxonase activity were measured in unrelated healthy donors and CHD patients. It was found that paraoxonase activity was trimodally distributed in both groups but no statistically significant difference was found between phenotype distributions of controls and CHD patients (gene frequencies; 0.632 and 0.382 of controls, 0.702 and 0.298 of patients for the A and B alleles, respectively). However, in CHD group, a high possibility was found to be phenotype A compared with the control group. A relative risk of 1.48 (95% confidence intervals (CI), 0.986-2.227) was found for the relation between CHD and the paraoxonase activity. Patients' HDL-cholesterol values were lower and triglycerides were higher than controls (P<0.001). It may be concluded from the present study that although no statistically significant difference was found between paraoxonase phenotype distributions of controls and CHD patients, a decrease in paraoxonase activity could become a risk factor for this disease.