Ultrastructure of immotile spermatozoa obtained from infertile male patients

Abstract

We sometimes experienced infertile patients whose sperms had no motility but were not stained by Eosin Y. In this paper we report five cases of so-called “immotile spermatozoa”. The ultrastructure of sperm tails was examined by transmission electrone microscope (TEM). These cases were selected from the out-patient population who attended inferitility clinic of our department. The semen analyses showed that all the cases had sperm motility below 1% and more than 90% of the spermatozoa were proven alive. Family history revealed that one case had an inferitile sibling. None of them had situs inversus, bronchiectasis and chronic sinusitis which are classic trias of Kartagener's syndrome. They had no symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection which was caused by the abnormality in the flagella of the respiratory tract. The TEM pictures of sperm tails showed partial deletion of inner dynein arms in two cases, lack of central microtubular doublets (so-called 9 + 0) in two cases and disarrangement of microtubular doublets in one case. For the treatment of these cases there is no effective means but AID. However, the rapid progress of IVF-ET techniques and a report that the spermatozoa from Kartagener's syndrome had showed penetration into eggs encoureged us to think the micromanipulation of spermatozoa with IVF-ET as a hopeful option of the treatment in the near future. © 1993, THE JAPANESE UROLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. All rights reserved.