Objective: To study male infertility's mechanism caused by varicocele.
Methods: 30 rats were selected at random, of 20 were operated, as varicocele's group;of 10 were pseudo-operated, as controlled group, testes were removed, stained and sectioned. Makler Score were adopted to analyse the bore, limitan's thickness, layer number of cell, the degree of cell's maturity and average score in 200 and 100 seminiferous tubulae respectively. CREM was determined by hybridization in situ, the difference between two groups was compared.
Results: In varicocele' group, seminiferous tubule's bore was decreased (101.2 +/- 2.2 vs 146.0 +/- 4.1), limitan became thicker (3.5 +/- 0.1 vs 1.9 +/- 0.2), cell' s layer number was reduced (3.0 +/- 0.2 vs 5.5 +/- 0.1), cell's maturity turned to disturbance (3.6 +/- 0.3 vs 4.9 +/- 0.1), the average score was lower than controlled group (16.0 +/- 1.2 vs 8.5 +/- 0.6), they had significant differences (P < 0.001). CREM expression was lower in varicocele group than in controlled one (VG 2.0 +/- 0.32, SoG 3.90 +/- 0.32) (P < 0.001), which was located in spermatogenous cell to spermatocyte stage. The quantu of expression and score value brought out positive correlation (r = 0.746, P < 0.001).
Conclusions: CREM lower expression could lead to breeding sperm functional lesion, which probably was one of the mechanisms of infertility caused by varicocele.