A Comparative Study Of Two Sperm Processing Techniques On The Results Of Intrauterine Insemination

Abstract

Intra-uterine insemination combined with controlled ovarian stimulation (COH/IUI) constitutes an important line of treatment for infertile couples diagnosed to have idiopathic male infertility (Toumaye, 2000). It lies in the middle of treatment after medical treatment, and before more sophisticated ARTs (Van Voorhis et al., 1998).

Intra-uterine insemination entails prepration of both male and female. Preparation of the female is done by controlled ovarian stimulation and monitoring (Dodson and Haney, 1991). Preparation of the male is done by semen processing (Mortimer, 1994). Semen processing is an important step in the preparation of semen for lUI. The selection of suitable and efficient semen processing techniques can improve the outcome of!UI (Carrell et al., 1998). This study was conducted to compare the efficacy of two commonly used techniques of semen processing which are swim-up (SU) and density gradient centrifugation (DGC). We used overlay technique • with SU that is better than SU from a washed pellet in lower elimination of hazardous• ROS (Shekarriz et al., 1995). With DGC we used Sil-select gradient that is less irritant and less hazardous than Percoll to sperm membrane (Henkel and Schill, 2003). The study included both laboratory comparison between the two techniques in the recovery of higher number and percentages of motile and morphologically normal sperm and lower number of round cells. This comparison was performed in both parts of the study. The first part included a comparison between the two techniques in auto-controlled, divided semen samples taken from patients with idiopathic male infertility and processed by both techniques