Fertility in cimetidine and bromocriptine treated rats

The present study was designed to see the role of drugs affecting serum prolactin upon the morphology of the gonad of male rat by giving bromocriptine to one group of animals concurrently with cimetidine. This study was conducted at the Department of Anatomy, Army Medical College (AMC), Rawalpindi in collaboration with National Veterinary Laboratories (NVL), Chak Shahzad, Islamabad. Ninety adult young male albino rats between the ages of 60 to 120 days were selected. They were bred in the animal house of the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad and were supplied with diet pellets supplemented with vitamins and water ad libitum. The animals were divided into three groups A, B and C. Each group consisted of thirty animals that were given intramuscular injection for two weeks and killed on the next day. Group A (Control), were given one millitre of normal saline. Group B, were given cimetidine in a dose of 200 mg/kg/bwt/day. Group C, were given cimetidine in a dose of 200 mg/kg/day and in addition, an injection of bromocriptine 2.5 mg/day was also given. The animals were sacrificed, the testis were removed, weighed, studied and then fixed. The spermatogenesis was normal in almost all of the tubules but a few of them were seen lined with only Sertoli cells and all the other germ cells like spermatogonia, primary spermatocyes, spermatids early and late, and spermatozoa were absent indicating total atrophy with both Sertoli cells and Leydig cells hyperplasia. It is concluded that the testicular atrophy as evidenced by decrease in diameter of tubules in case of group B and adverse effects on the qualitative changes such as cellular proliferation/spermatogenesis as well as quantitative morphometric parameters such as decrease in thickness of germinal epithelium in case of both group B as well as C could be due to the toxic effect of the drugs on the testes in general and seminiferous tubule in particular.