Obtaining a normal semen analysis does not guarantee male fertility, as this test does not report sperm abnormalities. Male factor is one of the main causes of male infertility. However, it continues to be the great forgotten factor despite the advances in Assisted Reproduction techniques. According to a study carried out by the Institut Marquès, the male factor is the cause of 7 out of 10 cases of sterility.
The male factor is one of the main causes of sterility. This was revealed by the study presented during the inauguration of the Congress of the Spanish Association of Andrology (ASESA) in Gran Canaria.
The study, which deals with the specialty of andrology, has analyzed 701 cases of patients who had been seeking pregnancy for between 8 and 30 years. Most of these patients had undergone up to 5 previous unsuccessful treatments in other centers or countries. The average age of the women who participated in the study was 41 years.
After the investigation, 64% of the patients achieved pregnancy in the first cycle. Of these, in 71% of the cases, the origin of the infertility was found to be male factor. In most of them, the treatment necessary to achieve this was oocyte donation; something that could have been avoided if the fertility of the male had been studied years ago.
What is a semen analysis?
The diagnosis of male sterility is currently performed by means of a semen analysis. It consists of performing a semen study to check the state of the spermatozoa and their functioning.
This test only provides information on whether the probabilities of natural gestation are diminished or normal. Even so, it is incomplete; it reports only the number, motility and morphology of spermatozoa but not sperm abnormalities such as membrane defects, acrosome reaction alterations, DNA strand fragmentation, centrosome defects or carriage of an altered number of chromosomes (aneuploidy). These abnormalities are not detected by routine semen analysis, so specific diagnostic tests are necessary.
Approximately 15% of infertile men have normal seminograms. In this situation it is accepted that the man is potentially fertile, but nevertheless, it is now known that many of them may have an occult sperm pathology not detectable in semen analysis.