Mini-review of studies on the effect of smoking and drinking habits on semen parameters.

This article aims at evaluating the impact of cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption on different semen parameters (volume, concentration, motility, morphology, total sperm count and viability), by reviewing all the published literature on smoking, alcohol and sperm morphology. The studies on smoking and sperm abnormalities show a limited effect of smoking on conventional sperm parameters. The data on alcohol are more sparse, and show an apparent protective effect of moderate alcohol drinking on sperm parameters, probably due to the antioxidant effect of some alcoholic beverages.

An heteroduplex mobility analysis assay based on capillary electrophoresis for the study of HCV quasispecies.

The quasispecies nature of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome is central to the transmission, persistence and pathogenesis of the infection. Heteroduplex mobility analysis (HMA) is a simple and an inexpensive technique for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of genetic variation of viral quasispecies. An original HMA for the HVR1 region of HCV was developed, based on a semi-automated, non-radioactive capillary electrophoresis system, which allows the processing of large numbers of samples in short times, the accurate measure of mobility shifts and the quantitation of heteroduplexes.