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Effects of chrysin in cadmium-induced testicular toxicity in the rat; role of multi-pathway regulation

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Abstract

Background

Cadmium (Cd) is a strong toxic agent and causes serious damage to testicular tissues. Chrysin (CHR) is a natural flavonoid with many effective properties, especially antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic properties. The current study describes new evidence for the ameliorative effects of CHR on oxidative stress, apoptosis, autophagy and inflammation pathways in Cd-induced testicular tissue toxicity.

Methods

Thirty-five male Wistar rats were divided into five groups, control, Cd, CHR, Cd + CHR25, and Cd + CHR50. Cd was administered alone at a dose of 25 mg/kg body weight or in combination with CHR 25 mg/kg and CHR 50 mg/kg for 7 days. Cd and CHR were administered orally. Biochemical, molecular, and histological methods were used to investigate inflammation, apoptosis, autophagy, and oxidant pathways in testicular tissue.

Results

Cd increased lipid peroxidation, JAK-2/STAT-3 levels, inflammation-related NF-κB, TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, COX-2, and iNOS levels, AKT-2, FOXO1, Bax, Apaf-1 and Caspase-3 levels, autophagic Beclin-1, LC3A and LC3B. The Cd also caused a decrease in the activities of antioxidant enzymes and GSH levels, antiapoptotic Bcl-2 levels. CHR, on the other hand, had the opposite effect of all these Cd-induced changes.

Conclusions

Overall, the data of this study indicate that testicular damage associated with Cd toxicity could be ameliorated by CHR administration.

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Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

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Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Aksaray University, Aksaray, Türkiye

    Sibel Çiğdem Tuncer & Fatih Mehmet Kandemir

  2. Department of Veterinary Biochemistry, Faculty of Veterinary, Atatürk University, Erzurum, Türkiye

    Sefa Küçükler & Cihan Gür

  3. Department of Veterinary Biochemistry, Faculty of Veterinary, Kafkas University, Kars, Türkiye

    Serpil Aygörmez

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  1. Sibel Çiğdem Tuncer
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  2. Sefa Küçükler
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by SÇT, SK, CG, SA, and FMK. The first draft of the manuscript was written by SÇT and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sibel Çiğdem Tuncer.

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Conflict of interest

Sibel Çiğdem Tuncer, Sefa Küçükler, Cihan Gür, Serpil Aygörmez, Fatih Mehmet Kandemir declares that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. Ethics committee approval was received for this study from the ethics committee of Necmettin Erbakan University KONUDAM Experimental Medicine Research and Study Center’s (No: 2022/65, Date: 30.12.2022). This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Tuncer, S.Ç., Küçükler, S., Gür, C. et al. Effects of chrysin in cadmium-induced testicular toxicity in the rat; role of multi-pathway regulation. Mol Biol Rep 50, 8305–8318 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-023-08715-8

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