Assessment the Relationship between High-Fat Diet Feeding and Male Subfertility in Albino Rats

Abstract

The current study planned to uncover the association between weight-gain from high fat diet and the consequent infertility in male rats. The study recruited 30 adult male rats divided equally into two groups: the 1st group was given normal diet and considered as a control group. The 2nd group was served high fat diet (HFD) 60% buffaloes’ fat for 16 weeks for induction what is like diet obesity. At the end of the 16th week, blood samples, testicular tissue and semen samples were obtained and underwent biochemical, histopathological, gene expression and microscopical investigation. Compared to control normal diet fed rats, the gained results revealed not only undesirable increased body weight with increased serum cholesterol and triglycerides. HFD group showed down regulation of steroidgenic genes StAR and CYP17A with low levels of serum testosterone. Semen analysis taken from HFD males demonstrated low quality represented by low sperm count with reduced viability, motility and increased abnormalities. Testicular tissue sections of positive control group displayed degenerative changes with positive reactions of proapoptotic markers Caspase3 and damaged cell indicator NLRP3.In contrast, the same sections displayed marked decrease of inhibitor of apoptosis, surviving. Accordingly, it can be concluded that HFD induced obesity negatively affect male infertility through several mechanisms including general cardiovascular health concern of hyper-lipidemia, hormonal imbalance, low quality semen resulted from degenerative changes of testicular functional tissue.