Effect of intravenous injection of bone marrow derived c-kit⁺ cells on testicular histological and stereologic changes, apoptosis rate, and sperm parameters in type 2 diabetic rats

Abstract

Diabetes and high-fat diets impair the fertility of diabetic men. In this study, the effect of intravenous injection of bone marrow derived C-kit⁺ cells on testicular histological and stereologic changes, and sperm parameters in type 2 diabetic rats was investigated. materials and methods: In this study, 48 male Wistar rats (weighing 180-220g) were randomly divided to 4 groups; Control (C), Diabetic (D), Diabetic+C-kit- cell (D+C-kit-), Diabetic+C-kit+ cell (D+C-kit+) groups.Moreover, 10 animals were randomly selected to extract C-kit⁺ and C-kitˉ cells. In diabetic groups, type 2 diabetes was induced by intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (35mg/kg) following 4 weeks of high-fat diet. Almost three hundred thousandof C-kit+ and C-kit- cells were ingected through tail vein after isolation using MACS method and identification using FACS method. At the end of the intervention, the animals were anesthetized by intraperitoneal injection of ketamine (50mg/kg) and xylazine (5 mg / kg) and the left testicle was immediately removed for histological changes and the right testicle was removed for evaluation of stereological changes, sperm parameters and DNA fragmentation rate. Results: These data demonstrated the successful recruitment of C-Kit+, and lesser C-Kit- cells into the testicular tissue. The results of the present study showed that diabetes caused teticular histological and stereological changes, significant decrease in sperm count, motility, viability and normal morphology, and increase in sperm deformity index, TZI, percentatge of immobile sperm, malformations in abnormal sperm and DNA fragmentation rate compared to C group (p<0.001). Treatment with C-kit+ cell could improve all these parameters compared to D and D+C-kit- groups (p<0.001); however, sperm count in D+C-kit+ group was significantly lower than C group and TZI testicular was higher than controls (p<0.01 to p<0.05).