Relationships between human sperm acrosin, acrosomes, morphology and fertilization in vitro

Abstract

Acrosin was measured in the semen used for sperm preparation for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in 118 patients. Acrosin levels correlated with the proportion of spermatozoa with normal intact acrosomes determined with Pisum sativum agglutinin labelled with fluorescein. However, acrosin levels and the proportion of spermatozoa with normal intact acrosomes in semen were not significantly related to the fertilization rate in vitro. Only the percentage normal morphology and sperm concentration in the insemination medium were independently significantly related to the fertilization rate by logistic regression analysis. In patients with fewer than 30% of spermatozoa with normal morphology, although acrosin levels were not correlated with the fertilization rate, the proportion of spermatozoa with normal intact acrosomes in the insemination medium was the only significant factor in the logistic regression analysis. In conclusion, acrosin levels have no prognostic value for fertilization in vitro but the proportion of spermatozoa with normal intact acrosomes may be a useful clinical marker of fertilizing ability in men with poor sperm morphology.

Immunofluorescence study of actin, acrosin, dynein, tubulin and hyaluronidase and their impact on in-vitro fertilization

“…As cell count is used as the denominator, it is noteworthy that the calculated activity may be subject to technical errors, especially for low sperm densities (<5 X 10 6 spermatozoa/ml). Results of this study agree with those of Kruger et al (1988) and Liu and Baker (1990), who found no relationship between acrosin activity and fertilization in vitro. There is no doubt that this enzyme plays a critical role during zona binding and zona penetration (Tesarik et al, 1988) but its action is dependent on structural and biochemical events which take place during capacitation and the acrosome reaction.…”

“…However, an attempt to assess the specificity of the acrosin antibody was performed by comparing the immunofluorescence scores with the acrosin activity determined on the sperm samples used for IVF (Figure 3). A significant correlation was found, although the acrosin activities were subject to large fluctuations from sample to sample (Kennedy et al, 1989;Liu and Baker, 1990). Unlike Kennedy et al (1989), we were unable to find any clear threshold value below which fertilization would fail (Table VI).…”

Development of a novel Computer Assisted system for human Sperm Head Morphometry based on open source software

“…The association was not restricted to any one particular classification system and/or evaluation procedure. Some of these studies also showed that this association was independent of any of the other semen parameters [11,12,16,20,21] . It is of utmost importance to obtain good quality control in a laboratory evaluating sperm morphology.…”

Semen analysis and sperm function testing

“…47 Observations made in a previous study concluded that sperm morphology is closely correlated with specific sperm functions. 48,49 Furthermore, Esterhuizen et al 50 point out that sperm morphology evaluation, especially the configuration of the acrosome, is a good method to estimate sperm fertilizing ability. Understandably, this relationship is closest if the physiological inducer, zona pellucida, is used to induce acrosome reaction for diagnostic purposes.…”

“…It is well documented that these assays provide important evidence on one of the recognition events leading to fertilisation. 47,49,76 Significant factors affecting the validity of both these assays include oocyte sources and maturation, inter-assay and intra-assay variability, sperm motility, morphology and acrosomal status. 45 …”