• The beneficial effects of combination herbal therapy (zayesh booalidaroo®+ Safoof-e hefz + Royal jelly) on semen quality of oligo-astheno-teratozoospermic men
  • Leila Naserpour,1 Seyed Abbas Seyed Ebrahimi,2 Seyedeh Saeideh Sahraei,3 Naser Kalhor,4 Hoda Fazaeli,6,*
    1. Department of Reproductive Biology, Academic Center for Education, Culture, and Research (ACECR), Qom Branch, Qom, Iran
    2. Department of Reproductive Biology, Academic Center for Education, Culture, and Research (ACECR), Qom Branch, Qom, Iran
    3. Department of Reproductive Biology, Academic Center for Education, Culture, and Research (ACECR), Qom Branch, Qom, Iran
    4. 4. Department of Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research (ACECR), Qom Branch, Qom, Iran
    6. 4. Department of Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research (ACECR), Qom Branch, Qom, Iran


  • Introduction: Male infertility is defined as a man's inability to conceive a child from a fertile woman. It has been shown to be responsible for 30-50 percent of infertility in humans and affects about 7% of all men. In the world today, several factors such as genetics, exposure to toxins, and aging have resulted in significant levels of male infertility. Semen quality is utilized as a criterion of male fecundity whereas male infertility is frequently caused by defects in the semen parameters including sperm concentration, appearance, and motility. Since infertility as a health-care issue has the potential to cause substantial psychological problems, as well as a difficult and depressing life for parents, its treatment has become a major pharmaceutical and medical industry concern, with products ranging from fertility hormones and other medications to in vitro fertilization procedures. In the meantime, traditional medicine is a very important discipline of pharmacy and medicine, and the plants employed in this medicine are considered as the main sources for the pharmaceutical industry's research into pharmacologically active medications. Furthermore, worldwide public interest in the use of this sort of treatment is steadily increasing. A variety of plants has been used to treat specific facets of male infertility, including sexual inability, libido (sexual desire), erectile and ejaculatory problems, and sperm abnormalities (azoospermia, oligospermia). It seems that the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-oedematous, and vagotonic properties of medicinal herbs can be considered as their probable mechanism to improve sperm parameters. They may also contain precursors for sperm production and raise serum testosterone (T) levels. Most of the investigations on the use of medicinal herbs in treating male infertility are conducted on experimental animals, with only a few clinical trials being published. Therefore, further investigation of the therapeutic effects of herbal medicine in humans seems to be necessary. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of compound herbal medicine (zayesh booalidaroo®+ safof-e hefz+ royal jelly) on improving abnormal sperm parameters and the hormonal level (LH, FSH, and T) of oligo-astheno-teratozoospermia (OAT) patients.
  • Methods: This study was conducted as a phase 3 randomized clinical trial. Totally, among infertile men referring to the highly specialized Rooya infertility treatment center, ACECR, Qom branch, 50 men with OAT were enrolled in this study, in 2020. All individuals gave informed consent prior to participation in the study. Patients were recruited with the following inclusion criteria: infertile couples with no previous report of pregnancy, normal female partners, and male partners defined as having OAT based on World Health Organization (WHO, 2010) criteria (24). Exclusion criteria were: History of receiving chemotherapy drugs, corticosteroids, anticoagulants, testosterone, and anti-androgens two months before the start of the study. Genital infections, anatomical abnormalities, chromosomal abnormalities, history of genital surgery (varicocele), alcohol or drug use, patients with ejaculatory disorders, systemic diseases (malignancy, thyroid disease, liver, and gallbladder). All the participants were selected based on the results of semen analysis by a urologist. The patients orally received combined herbal medication including zayesh booalidaroo®+ Safoof-e hefz+ Royal jelly- which is produced in Booali Daroo Company, Iran- for 3 months. Variables including seminal parameters, sperm DNA fragmentation (SDF), chromatin maturity, total antioxidant capacity, lipid peroxidation, and hormonal parameters (LH, FSH, T, Prolactin, and Estradiol) were measured before and after the interventions.
  • Results: According to the obtained data, improved total and /ml count (p=0.0001 and p=0.007, respectively) along with increased progressive and total motility (0.02 and p= 0.043, respectively) were shown after the herbal intervention. Also, herbal therapy decreased SDF significantly (p= 0.000), while couldn’t change the percentage of protamine deficiency (p= 0.49). In hormonal assessment, except in the case of the T hormone which showed an elevated amount (p= 0.00), there was no significant change after the intervention (p>0.05). The increase in testosterone level, which subsequently leads to the improvement of sperm parameters, as well as the amelioration of sperm chromatin quality, in turn, are derived from the antioxidant properties of the ingredients contained in the herbal complex, whereas the concentration of seminal plasma antioxidant including malondialdehyde (MDA), total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) revealed significant increase (p= 0.000, p= 0.005, p= 0.013, respectively).
  • Conclusion: Our herbal complex improves male infertility in an efficient manner and can be regarded as an alternative option for ameliorating semen quality.
  • Keywords: Oligoasthenoteratozoospermia, Herbal therapy, Semen parameters, Antioxidant enzymes