Correlation between sperm DNA fragmentation index and CMA3 positive spermatozoa in globozoospermic patients

Abstract

SUMMARYThe absence of the acrosome causes the situation which is called globozoospermia. There are a few studies, mostly as case reports, about correlation between levels of sperm DNA damage in patients with total round-headed spermatozoa. We investigated this correlation as well as CMA3 positive spermatozoa in 20 globozoospermic men (with more than 90% round-headed spermatozoa) attending to Royan Institute. Semen samples divided into three parts to semen analysis, to measure DNA fragmentation index (DFI) using sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) and to detect CMA3 + sperm cells by chromomycin A3 staining and fluorescent microscopy. Our results showed that there were significant differences in sperm concentration, total sperm motility, and normal morphology between patients and controls group (p < 0.001). Moreover, the average of DFI and CMA3 positive spermatozoa in patients group significantly increases compared with control group (p < 0.001). A significant correlation between DFI and CMA3 + in total population was also detected in patients group (r = 0.45, p = 0.046). To our knowledge, this is the largest study about correlation between DNA damage levels and CMA3 positive spermatozoa with round head sperm cells in total globozoospermic men. It seems that the increase in DNA damage may be because of defective sperm DNA compaction, as we detected CMA3 positive sperm cells in these patients.

Globozoospermia syndrome: An update

“…However, we observed remarkably lower total motility, progressive motility, sperm count and normal morphology in both types of globozoospermic samples compared with normozoospermic controls ( p < .001) (Ghasemzadeh et al, ; Talebi et al, ) (Table ). In agreement with our results, Hosseinifar et al demonstrated significant decreases in sperm concentration, total motility and normal morphology in patients with globozoospermia compared with the controls ( p < .001) (Hosseinifar et al, ).…”

“…This finding could be due to two reasons. Firstly, all three studies (Ghasemzadeh et al, ; Hosseinifar et al, ; Talebi et al, ) were performed according to WHO () standards, which presented lower cut‐off criteria compared with previously introduced WHO standards ( and ) (Table ). Secondly, these researches included 47 oligozoospermic patients, whereas most of the previous studies in this regard were case reports.…”

Association between total globozoospermia and sperm chromatin defects

“…In the current study, mean percentage of protamine deficiency was lower than recent study(34% vs 49%) published by Hosseinifar et al. (). This difference could be due to low number of counted spermatozoa (100 vs 500) or low number of globozoospermic cases (20 vs 30).…”

“…The difference between studies can be due to low number of globozoospermic cases, method of assessment, type of globozoospermia (total or partial) and etc. Recently, two studies demonstrated high rate of sperm DNA fragmentation and protamine deficiency in 20 and 15 partial globozoospermic patients (Ghasemzadeh et al., ; Hosseinifar et al., ). In light of these considerations, we decided to assess sperm protamine deficiency and DNA fragmentation in 30 men affected by total globozoospermia (100% round‐headed spermatozoa without acrosomes).…”

Expression profile ofPLCζ,PAWP,andTR-KITin association with fertilization potential, embryo development, and pregnancy outcomes in globozoospermic candidates for intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection and artificial oocyte activation

“…Only in one case (G12), the expression levels of these transcripts were close to fertile men, but AOA could not result in a good fertilization rate (17%) in this case. Different explanations can be provided for such a case including defective chromatin packaging or increased DNA fragmentation which has been thought to affect fertilization and pregnancy outcome of ICSI oocytes (De-Braekeleer et al, 2015;Hosseinifar et al, 2015). Yassine et al (2015) recently demonstrated that in globozoospermic mice and humans with deletion of DPY19L2, sperm devoid of an acrosome has altered genomic packaging and increased DNA damage which can compromise ICSI outcomes (Yassine et al, 2015).…”