New and traditional approaches for the assessment of testicular toxicity

Inter‐laboratory control data for reproductive endpoints required in the OPPTS 870.3800/OECD 416 reproduction and fertility test

“…Mean spermatid counts/g testicular tissue (mean 5 142.2À159.5 Â 10 6 for Sprague-Dawley-derived rats; 106.2À109.2 Â 10 6 for Wistar-derived rats) were similar to previously reported spermatid concentrations in both strains (e.g., Tyl et al, 2004;Willoughby et al, 2000;Schneider et al, 2005;Suter et al, 1998). Despite this variability, spermatid counts generally are considered to be a more sensitive indicator of male reproductive toxicity than fertility because of excess sperm production in rats (Meistrich, 1989).…”

Assessment of quantitative dual-parameter flow cytometric analysis for the evaluation of testicular toxicity using cyclophosphamide- and ethinylestradiol-treated rats.

“…Recently, new approaches for detecting testicular toxicity with FCM have been reported; for example, detection of apoptosis (Krishnamurthy et al, 1998;Shiratsuchi et al, 1997), delay of spermatogenesis with BrdU staining and precise classification with the combination of other parameters (Suter et al, 1997b(Suter et al, , 1998a(Suter et al, and 1998b. Our procedure is suitable to combine with another staining kit, especially for a specific antibody, because the membrane of isolated cells remains intact due to no use of severe treatments with trypsin, detergent or pepsin.…”

“…Thus, sensitivity is the major limitation of the FCM analysis in evaluating testicular toxicity. Several improved methods have been reported using in combination another parameter such as the somatic-specific antibody (Hittmair et al, 1994), the amount of mitochondria (Petit et al, 1995), or both of them (Suter et al, 1997a(Suter et al, , 1997b(Suter et al, , 1998a(Suter et al, , and 1998b.…”

Flow Cytometric Assessment of Ethylene Glycol Monoethyl Ether on Spermatogenesis in Rats.

“…Traditional evaluation approaches also involve histopathologic examination of testicular tissue, which includes the description of several cell types, the determination of spermatogenic stages, and the detection of morphologic and cell-kinetic abnormalies in the spermatogenic process [13]. However, these methods are subjective and time-consuming [10][11][12].…”

“…As compared with current methods for the evaluation of spermatogenic impairment, FCM offers advantages in terms of objectivity, rapidity, analysis of large number of cells providing high statistical significance, and unbiased sampling of cells [10][11][12]. It also provides quantitative values for evaluating different cell types on the basis of their DNA ploidy/stainability level [10][11][12][13].…”