Aim: This study investigated the effect of allografting umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (UCBMCs) into the scrotum on sexual function in male elderly mice. Methods: UCBMCs were injected once into the scrotal sheath cavity of elderly mice. Results: The transplanted UCBMCs survived in the scrotal sheath cavity for 1 month. The mice had significantly increased blood testosterone concentrations, cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) levels and total nitric oxide synthase (T-NOS) activity in the corpus cavernosum and an increase in the number of mouse matings within 30 min (all p = 0.000). Conclusion: Scrotum-implanted UCBMCs improve the sexual function of male elderly mice through testosterone production and the NOS/cGMP pathway, which may provide an innovative transplantation approach for the treatment of erectile dysfunction.

Keywords:

Papers of special note have been highlighted as: • of interest; •• of considerable interest

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Vol. 18, No. 9

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Received 16 November 2022

Accepted 20 July 2023

Published online 9 August 2023

Published in print September 2023

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Keywords

Author contributions

Y Jiang and J Li conceived the experiments, wrote the manuscript and secured funding. They were aware of the group allocation at the different stages of the experiments (during the allocation, the conduct of the experiments, the outcome assessment, and the data analysis). W Xue, L Liu, H Yu, X Zhang, X Ye, Y Chen, X Liu, W Yao and J Zheng performed the experiments. J Liu and X Lan provided reagents. J Miao, J Sun and J Xiao provided expertise and feedback. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This study is supported by the Applied Basic Research Project of Yunnan Province (2018FD031), the Joint Special Project of Basic Research in Local Undergraduate Universities of Yunnan Province (2017FH001-086), the first batch of school-introduced talents research start-up projects of Ningde Normal University in 2021 (2021Y11), and Fujian Province Funding for regular projects in 2021 in the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ of Educational Science (FJJKBK21-064). Publication costs were funded by 2021Y11. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval or have followed the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki for all human or animal experimental investigations.

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