Abstract
Background and Objective: Sodium Valproate (SV) is a medicine that is used to treat epilepsy and to prevent headache. In this study, L-cysteine (LC) was used to decrease the stress and biochemical variations induced by SV treatment. The present study investigated the defensive actions of LC vs, SV that induced testicular impairment. Materials and Methods: The rats were split into six groups (n = 10) as following: 1st control animals were saline-treated, 2nd and 3rd groups were administrated two doses of SV (100 and 500 mg kg(-1) b.wt.) presenting low and high doses, respectively, 4th group was treated with 100 mg kg(-1) of LC, in addition 5th and 6th groups were treated with SV-LD+LC and SV-HD+LC, respectively. The experiment was run for 30 successive days. Weights of the testis, serum testosterone, testicular oxidative/anti-oxidant capacity and histopathological damage scores of testis were recorded. Results: The SV group had significantly increased the tissue oxidative stress markers and significantly declined all antioxidant enzymes activities as compared to the control group. When the animals treated with combination of LC and any dose of SV, levels of oxidative parameters significantly declined, as well as the anti-oxidant significantly elevated compared to the SV-LD and SV-HD groups. The Johnsen's testicular score values showed improvement when LC was co-treated with the SV. Conclusion: Current results indicated that LC had partial protective effects against SV-induced testis damage at the biochemical and histopathological levels that could be due to the enhanced tissue anti-oxidant capacity.