Using Sperm chromatin Staining Techniques as a Predictive Diagnostic Tool for Male Infertility

AbstractBackground : It is a scientific fact today that routine seminal analysis is only a poor predictor of malereproductive potentiality , so that there is an increased need for finding out new functional tests in the assessmentof male infertility .Objective : The aim of the present study was to investigate the predictive value of sperm chromatin integrityassays as a complementary tool to assist in diagnosis of infertility .Method : This study was carried out between January 2013 and November 2013 including one hundred (100)selected infertile men who attended to fertility Center in Al-Sadr Medical City . The study also included twenty(20) healthy fertile volunteers as a control .Aniline blue (AB) staining was used to differentiate between normal condensed chromatin (unstained) andabnormal decondensed chromatin (blue), while toluidine blue (TB) was used to differentiate between normalintact sperm DNA (blue) and abnormal damaged sperm DNA (purple), this is the first study in Iraq thatemployed (TB) to assess sperm DNA fragmentation .Results : The results showed that there was a high significant difference (p0.05) was found in the sperm chromatin condensation . Both sperm chromatin condensation andsperm DNA damage showed a significant positive correlation with sperm morphology, and a significant negativecorrelation with sperm concentration, motility and progressive motility.Conclusions : The study concluded that sperm DNA fragmentation (by TB staining) has good predictive valuein discriminating infertile and fertile men over seminal fluid analysis .Recommendations : TB and AB staining of sperm chromatin can be used in the course of infertility diagnosis .However, more investigations may be needed to confirm the discriminating power of sperm chromatincondensation assays (by AB staining) to be ready to use in the routine workup in the fertility clinics .Keywords : Predictive value, Aniline Blue , Toluidine Blue , sperm Chromatin, Male infertilit