Sir,
We feel immense pleasure that Viroj Wiwanitkit and KP Skandhan have shown their keen interest in our research work and given their comments. The present study shows only the very presence of gold in all the semen samples of healthy males. While Shankan et al. could detect it only in two samples, reason could be that the previous researcher did study in only seminal plasma while we did the same in whole semen including spermatazoa.[2] This itself explains that gold is present in the sperm cells. It looks impressive that the presence of gold in spermatocyte might have involved in the cell physiology. This very fact was postulated for claimed beneficial effect of gold ashes used in Ayurveda.
As far as spermatotoxic effect is concerned, we all are aware that most of trace metals which are beneficial for the body in optimum dose are toxic in higher dosages. More over the study quoted by authors uses nanoparticles while ancient Ayurveda used macroparticles in such preparation therefore optimal dose adjustment may be needed while using gold by nanotechnology to detect its beneficial effect.[1]
However, the present study is only an observational study, in our next study we are observing the gold content in subfertile men which will be followed by the interventional study to come to any conclusion.
REFERENCES
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