Testicular hyperthermic shocks and the boundary tissue of the seminiferous tubules in rats.

Changes occurring in the wall or boundary tissue (Lacy & Rotblat, 1960) of the seminiferous tubules following damage of the testis have been reported by several workers (Lacy & Rotblat, 1960; Turpeinen, Turpeinen & Talanti, 1962; Lacy, 1964; Sch\l=o"\ffling,1965; Idanpaan-Heikkila, 1966). Though hyperthermic sensitivity of the germinal epithelium of the mammalian scrotal testes has been well documented (Collins & Lacy, 1969), response of the boundary tissue of seminiferous tubules to hyperthermia has not been properly studied. The brief comments of Turpeinen et al. (1962) and Idanpaan-Heikkila (1966) pertaining to the structure and histochemical make-up of the boundary tissue following testicular hyperthermic shock, however, are suggestive of its altered physiology. Sexually mature male albino rats, each weighing 200 to 250 g, were anaes¬ thetized with Nembutal (5 mg/100 g body wt) and were allotted to six groups, each of which included an average of eight rats. The control rats, composing Group I, were not subjected to hyperthermic shock. The pelvic region of the rats in Groups II to VI were immersed up to the penis level for 20 min in a water-bath maintained at 43-5°C. The heat-treated rats were killed after 3, 7, 14, 21 and 42 days respectively. Various histochemical techniques were used for the localization of lipids (Baker, 1944), carbohydrates (Hotchkiss, 1948; Himes & Moriber, 1956), and alkaline (Gomori, 1946) and acid phosphatases (Gomori, 1950) in the tissues of both the control and the experimental rats. For the identification of lipids, small pieces of tissue were fixed in formalde¬ hyde-calcium, post-chromed for 18 hr at room temperature and for 24 hr at 60°C, embedded in gelatine and finally coloured with Sudan black B, essentially as described by Baker ( 1944). For the detection of carbohydrates, the periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) technique