Evidence for the involvement of NGF in human sperm motility

Abstract

Motility is an important physiological characteristic of a mature sperm. Nerve growth factor (NGF) is a key protein for the survival, maintenance and deve-lopment of the central and peripheral nervous sys-tems. It has been shown that NGF and its receptors TrkA and p75 are widely expressed in the testis, acce-ssory reproductive organ, and the epididymal sperms. These observation have shifted the attention to the role of NGF on male reproductive physiology. In the present study, we found that NGF remarkably in-creased testicular coefficient in rats subjected to un-predictable chronic mild stress. Furthermore, we in-vestigated the role of NGF on human sperm motility in vitro by CASA. The results showed that the para-meters of sperm motility after NGF treatment had significantly increased, the means of VAP, VSL, VCL, BCF and LIN were significantly increased 32% than those of NGF absence, the means of MAD, STR, ALH and WOB had no notable difference. In addition, NGF promotes the sperm motility in a time-and dose-de-pendent manner. Taken together, our findings suggest that NGF plays a promoted role in sperm motility.