Effects of ionamin, herbalife, and 24 hour diet shake on the sperm morphology of mice

The sperm morphology assay was utilized in this study to evaluate the potential mutagenicity of Ionamin, HerbaLife and 24Hour Diet Shake on sexually mature male Swiss Webster mice. Four groups of 15 mice were injected intraperitoneally with the respective sublethal dosage levels of the dietary products. The mice were sacrificed via cervical dislocation 35 days postexposure and dissection of the cauda epididymis was carried out to obtain the semen samples required for the preparation of sperm suspensions. One hundred spermatozoa for each mouse were examined using a light microscope with camera attachment, and the abnormalities of the sperm morphology were observed. The sperm abnormality test revealed no potential mutagenic activity of Ionamin and the 24Hour Diet Shake. However, a significant increase in the sperm morphology and thus, a dose-response relationship was observed in the mice treated with HerbaLife. The types of sperm abnormalities included the amorphous, banana, balloon, beak and two-tail types, in decreasing order of incidence. Previous studies have shown that distortions in the head shape could be correlated to mutagenicity since it is known that abnormal sperm increases after exposure to mutagenic agents and, sperm abnormalities are induced by mutagenic agents. Although sperm morphology is only one among a multiplicity of factors determining mutagenicity, the results of the study suggest that the further biochemical studies be done on dietary products, for the fact that the inductions of many cancers can be traced to exposures which cause mutational events and that many, if not all, mutagens are potential carcinogens