THE EFFECTS OF LAVANDULA AND MEDICAL OZONE THERAPY ON SPERMIOGRAM PARAMETERS IN RATS WITH LIVER DAMAGE INDUCED BY CARBON TETRACHLORIDE

Objective

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is frequently used in animal research to generate hepatotoxicity due to the causes oxidative stress within the organism. Lavandula Angustifolia is well-known for its antioxidant capabilities, which can aid in the prevention and treatment of future hepatotoxicity. Medical ozone therapy is the appropriate dosage of ozone gas. Medical ozone's ability to reduce oxidative stress suggests that it could be used to prevent and treat hepatotoxicity. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of Lavandula, medical ozone and Lavandula+medical ozone treatments on the sperm counts and sperm morphology of the rat which have hepatotoxicity.

Materials and methods

The male Wistar rats chosen in the study were 8-12 weeks old and weighed 250-500 g with seven animals in each group, four groups were created as control, lavandula, medical ozone and lavandula and medical ozone. For ten days, 0.2 ml/kg of CCl4 was intraperitoneally injected into each of the 28 rats in these four groups. Following CCl4 delivery, a group other than the control group received 400 mg/kg Lavandula angustifolia oil via gavage every other day for 14 days. An intraperitoneal injection of 1 mg/kg medical ozone was given for 7 cycles to a different group. For seven cycles, the final experimental group received both 1 mg/kg of medical ozone intraperitoneally and 400 mg/kg of Lavandula angustifolia oil by gavage. Extracted sperm samples from epididymis incubated in PBS for ten minutes at 37 °C. Spermac Kit was used to stain the smeared and fixed sperm samples. The sample was counted in ten fields using a Makler camera and a light microscope with 40X objective. Ethics certificate from Maltepe University Animal Experiments Local Ethics Committee was obtained for this study (No: 2023.06.03).

Results

It was determined that, in comparison to the control group and Lavandula enhanced the sperm count (p<0.001) when added to the treatment protocol for the rats with liver damage, both in combination and independently from medical ozone. But when combined with medical ozone, lavandula was found to have no effect on sperm count when compared to the control group (p>0.05). However, there is a variation in the overall number of head, neck, and tail anomalies across the three groups when analyzing the sperm morphology in terms of abnormalities. In other words, there is a difference in Lavandula, medical ozone and both groups (p<0.001). But there was no difference (p>0.05) between the control group and the other groups.

Conclusions

According to our obtained results, although there was no statistically significant increase in the sperm counts of rats treated with medical ozone and Lavandula+ medical ozone, the increase in sperm counts was observed only in rats treated with Lavandula, suggesting that medical ozone may suppress the effect of Lavandula. Our study is among the first studies in the literature in which the relationship between Lavandula and medical ozone was revealed.