Background: Immunological infertility is expected to be the reason of infer-tility in 9-36% of the concerned twosomes. The major cause of immunological infertility is the creation of anti-sperm antibodies (ASA), which influence the capability of insemination of spermatozoa. It has been detected that anti-sperm antibodies (ASA) are present either systemically in blood or locally in seminal plasma of approximately 10% of infertile male patients. Immunity to sperm can cause infertility; humoral antibodies directed against sperm did not necessarily impair fertility unless the circulating antibodies are also present within the re-productive tract and on the living sperm surface. Hormonal imbalance and sperm autoimmunity have been considered as two systems that play in near association and affect each other. Testosterone is the Steroid hormone necessary for the de-velopment and maintenance of secondary sexual characteristics as well as initi-ation and maintenance of Spermatogenesis .It was known that males with abnor-mal seminal fluids have lower concentrations of the testosterone hormone. Objectives: To study the serum & seminal plasma antisperm antibodies levels in relevance to levels of testosterone in serum and seminal plasma accordingly to sperm function parameters in different groups of infertile patients. Subjects,Materials and Methods: Blood and semen samples were collected from (80) subjects (60) infertile patients (20Asthenozoospermic, 20 Oligozoospermic,20Azoospermic) and 20 Normozoospermic subjects .The anti-sperm antibody and testosterone levels were measured by using Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Results: The Antisperm antibodies were positive in serum of normozoospermic, asthenozo-ospermic, oligozoospermic and azoospermic men respectively are about 10%, 5%, 20%,5% and in the total group was 10% positive. The ASA in seminal plasma of normozoospermic men, asthenozoospermic men, oligozoospermic men and azoospermic men respectively are 0%, 0%, 5%, 5% and in the total groups 2.5%.These findings lead to no possibility to make clear correlations with the studied hormones. There was significant increase (P<0.05) in the levels of testosterone in serum and seminal plasma in comparison between normozoospermic and infertile men subgroups. There was significant decrease (P<0.05) in the levels of pro-gesterone in serum and seminal plasma in comparison between normozoospermic men and infertile men subgroups, the highest levels were observed in asthenozoospermic subgroup. The study showed that 10 patients (12.5%) out of 80 patients showed a positive ASA positive in serum or seminal plasma of all groups. The result was considered positive if the value was ≥60 RU / ml .On these basis and regarding that screening criteria the positive ASA group showed the association with the low levels of testosterone in both types of the samples(serum and seminal plasma), these results was exhibited a high significant difference when compared with negative ASA group. Conclusion: Determination of the relevance of the levels of testosterone and anti-sperm anti-bodies in the serum and seminal plasma, which in turn is important to determine the type of infertility especially the immunological type.
Background: The immune infertility caused by anti-sperm antibodies (ASAs) represented about 1020%- of infertility among the couples, the ASAs interfere with sperm parameters such as the sperm motility and sperm ability to penetrate cervical mucus, sperm-oocyte binding, and fertilization and embryo developments. Objectives: The present study designed to assess semen analysis, presence of ASAs and DNA fragmentation index as well as correlation within these parameters in normzoospermic Iraqi subjects Patients, Materials and Methods: A total number of Iraqi subjects (116) with range of age (2051-) years and their mean duration of infertility (4.70 ± 2.77). Seminal fluid for Macroscopic and Microscopic assessments done according to WHO 2010 criteria. The mixed agglutination reaction (MAR) test used to assess theirASAs in semen (direct method), seminal plasma and serum (indirect method); for the both IgG and IgA classes of antibodies and their distribution among different parts of spermatozoa as percentage. Results: The mean of IgG using direct method was (23.881.75±) and for indirect detection method the mean was (27.412.41±) with no significant difference (P<0.05) between the two methods. While the direct method for IgA detection mean (14.46 ±1.76) and the mean for indirect method of detection (6.860.39±) and there was significant difference (P>0.05) between the two methods. In addition to that, the distribution of IgG and IgA detected by direct method on sperm parts showed no significance difference except for the sperm tail; while the indirect method for IgA and IgG showed significant difference in distribution on sperm mid-piece. Conclusion: The correlation among sperm parameters and Immunoglobulin using direct and indirect methods showing variations in significance also in the correlation between the direct and indirect methods according to distributions on sperm surface