In children with undescended testis,oxidative stress, cytokine responce and autoimmunity are possible effects on the subfertility/infertility

It is well-known fact that undescended testicles, common case in childhood, may cause significant complications like sub-fertility/infertility, malignity development when they are not treated. Even, it is still controversial that the mentioned complications are not fully avoided when testicles are pulled down into scrotum with Orchiopexy method, which is the standard treatment for undescended testicles. Moreover, sub-fertility/infertility risk is higher for both one-sided and two-sided undescended testicles since the deterioration on one testicle causes deterioration and structural changes on the other testicle for reasons that could not be clearly explained yet. We designed this study to figure out which of the three accused mechanisms; oxidative stress, cytokine response and autoimmune causes one-sided and two-sided deterioration of the testicles in the undescended testicle cases.For the study, an experimental group with 88 children with undescended testicles and a control group with 44 healthy children were formed. MDA and IMA levels were monitored in both groups to assess oxidative stress. MDA levels were determined with TBARS Assay on serum samples of the both groups. Albumin Cobalt Binding Test was used to determine the IMA levels on serum samples of the both groups. The reducing biding capacity of albumin cobalt was evaluated with coulometric determination method. In order to assess cytokine response in both groups, IL-6 levels in serum were measured with AssayMax Human IL-6 ELISA kit. Autoimmunity effect in both groups were evaluated with Indirect Immuno-fluorescent method, by using Euroimmun Spermatozoa (human) (Euroimmun, Lubeck, Germany) kits.The statistical interpretation of the available data showed that the increase in MDA results of the experimental group is greater than the control group at statistically significant level (p=0,003). However, when IMA scores of the experimental and control groups were compared, no significant difference was observed (p=0,179). In the evaluation of cytokine response, it was observed that IL-6 results of the experimental group increased significantly higher than the control (p=0,019). When autoimmune is considered, although ASA results of the experimental group were higher, the groups could not be compared because the variance of the data was not suitable for chi-square test. Furthermore, there was no statistically significant difference when ASA positives were cumulatively evaluated (p=0,473).The results of the present study tell that oxidative stress and cytokine response may have substantial effects on etiology of sub-fertility/infertility developing in the long term on children with undescended testicles. On the other hand, no additive effect of autoimmune was observed.