Treatment of male infertility

Abstract

Male factor infertility is a general term that describes a situation in which the inability to conceive is associated with an alteration identified in the male partner. This dysfunction may be associated with low sperm concentration (oligozoospermia), poor sperm motility (asthenozoospermia) or abnormal sperm morphology (teratozoospermia); however, generally, a disturbance of all these variables, oligoasthenoteratozoospermia, is mostly frequent in male subfertility. For many andrological disorders, it is not possible to find a reasonable cause and various uncontrolled treatments have been applied to infertile men, often just on an empirical basis. More recently, after the explosive development of modern assisted reproduction techniques (ARTs), feasible with a single spermatozoon [intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)], the treatment of male infertility has received new meaning and andrologists are no longer expected to achieve a quantitative increase in sperm number but are instead asked to improve the fertility potential of the single sperm cell in order to achieve better results in both in vitro fertilization and ICSI. Additional prospective studies are needed to better understand the possible role of therapy in ART candidate patients.