Department of Medical Biosciences, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa.
Andrologia. 2012 Oct;44(5):308-14. doi: 10.1111/j.1439-0272.2012.01282.x. Epub 2012 Feb 15.
Eurycoma longifolia (Tongkat ali; TA) is a Malaysian shrub used to treat various illnesses including male infertility. Considering that TA is used to improve male fertility and no report regarding its safety has been published, this study investigated the effects of TA extract on various sperm functions. Semen samples of 27 patients and 13 donors were divided into two groups, washed and swim-up spermatozoa, and incubated with different concentrations of TA (1, 10, 20, 100, 2000 μg ml(-1) ) for 1 h at 37 °C. A sample without addition of TA served as control. For washed spermatozoa, significant dose-dependent trends were found for vitality, total motility, acrosome reaction and reactive oxygen species-positive spermatozoa. However, these trends were only significant if the highest concentrations were included in the calculation. Contrary, the increase in the percentage of acrosome-reacted spermatozoa with increasing TA concentrations is very significant (P < 0.0001), and a significant difference (P = 0.0069) to the control could even be recorded at 20 μg TA per ml. For swim-up spermatozoa, no trend could be observed. Results indicate that the TA extract has no deleterious effects on sperm functions at therapeutically used concentrations (<2.5 μg ml(-1) ). However, at very high concentrations, TA may have harmful effects in vitro.
长柄葫芦（Tongkat ali；TA）是一种马来西亚灌木，用于治疗各种疾病，包括男性不育症。由于 TA 被用于改善男性生育能力，且尚未有关于其安全性的报告，因此本研究调查了 TA 提取物对各种精子功能的影响。将 27 名患者和 13 名供体的精液样本分为两组，即洗涤精子和泳动精子，并将其与不同浓度的 TA（1、10、20、100、2000μg/ml）在 37°C 下孵育 1 小时。未添加 TA 的样本作为对照。对于洗涤精子，活力、总活力、顶体反应和活性氧阳性精子的存在呈显著的剂量依赖性趋势。然而，如果将最高浓度纳入计算，则仅发现这些趋势具有统计学意义。相反，随着 TA 浓度的增加，顶体反应精子的百分比显著增加（P<0.0001），即使在每毫升 20μg TA 的情况下，与对照组相比也存在显著差异（P=0.0069）。对于泳动精子，未观察到趋势。结果表明，在治疗性使用浓度（<2.5μg/ml）下，TA 提取物对精子功能没有有害影响。然而，在非常高的浓度下，TA 可能在体外具有有害影响。
