The effect of Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Hormonse Use by Body Builders on Sperm Count and Interleukin -10

Abstract

Exercises done by body builders have a great benefit for the general health, muscle size and performance. Anabolic androgenic steroid (AAS) hormones are commonly used by body builders to increase muscle mass and strength depending on its mode of action to increase the level of nitrogen retention in muscle  insulin like growth factor(IGF-1) increase in muscle tissue and in the liver.

Eighty male volunteers, their age groups are ranging from 21- 35 years. They were divided into  three groups; the first group 27 age matched volunteers apparently healthy (healthy control group), Second group 27 Body builder players  attending to a sport club in Baghdad with androgen anabolic steroid hormone (AAS) use (steroid group), and the third group 26 bodybuilders players  attending  the sport club without AAS use (fitness group).

The serum was used for estimation of testosterone level  by applying enzyme immuno-florescent technology and estimation Anti-sperm Ab  test by heamo-agglutination method.

Sperm count was done for each seminal fluid sample,  IL-10 cytokine was estimated by a sandwich ELISA method in seminal plasma.

A bodybuilders with AAS use shows a significant reduction in sperm count (P=0. 00),while fitness group sperm count shows slight non-significant decrease compared to the healthy control group (P=0. 7). Serum testosterone level in AAS use group shows a significant    decline compared with fitness and healthy control groups (P= 0.00), IL-10 as an anti-inflammatory cytokine shows a high level in the AAS user group compared to the healthy group (0.04)

In  general the final impact of AAS use on body builders immunity  are;  declining in phagocytosis and an increase in IL-10 which act as  a suppressor to the  immune response, these results suggest that AAS abuse players are more liable to infection and decrease in sperm count which may cause temporarily or permanently infertility

Key ward : Seminal Plasma IL-10, Serum Testosterone and Sperms count .