Purpose: To explore sperm chromosomal aneuploidy, sperm membrane and DNA integrity in infertile patients with anejaculation.
Methods: Semen samples were collected from 18 infertile men with spinal cord injury (SCI) by penile vibratory stimulation (PVS) and from 14 psychogenic anejaculation (PA) patients by percutaneous vasal sperm aspiration (PVSA). These semen samples as well as samples from 16 donors were analyzed using the hypo-osmotic swelling (HOS) test, the sperm chromatin dispersion (SCD) test and multi-color fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) with probes specific for chromosomes 13, 18, 21, X and Y.
Results: There were significant differences in the percentages of motile sperm, normal morphologic sperm and sperm DNA fragmentation between the infertile men with SCI and the control group (P < 0.05 and P < 0.01). The sperm motility was significantly greater in the PA-PVSA group than in the SCI-PVS group (P < 0.01). The number of round cells per mL of semen obtained from the 18 SCI patients by PVS was between 1 and 8 million. The rate of sperm DNA fragmentation in the SCI-PVS group was higher than that of the PA-PVSA group (P < 0.05). The aneuploidy rates for the SCI patients were 2.4-fold higher for chromosomes 13, 18 and 21 and 2.2-fold higher for chromosomes X and Y than for patients in the control group (P < 0.0001).
Conclusions: The semen quality is poorer, sperm DNA fragmentation and sperm chromosomal aneuploidies are seen at a higher rate for SCI patients compared to healthy, fertile and normospermic men. Whether the difference in yield is due to increased scrotal temperature, genitourinary infection, or other reasons requires further study.