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Journal of Andrology, Vol 14, Issue 1 17-22, Copyright © 1993 by The American Society of Andrology

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Decreased responsiveness to progesterone of spermatozoa in oligozoospermic patients

C. Falsetti, E. Baldi, C. Krausz, R. Casano, P. Failli and G. Forti
Department of Clinical Pathophysiology, University of Florence, Italy.

Spermatozoa from oligozoospermic subjects are characterized by a reduced in vitro ability to penetrate hamster oocytes and by a decreased responsiveness to physiological stimuli that trigger the acrosome reaction. One of the first steps in the induction of the acrosome reaction is an increase of intracellular free calcium concentrations ([Ca2+]i). It has been recently shown that progesterone (P) is able to increase [Ca2+]i in capacitated human sperm at concentrations similar to those found in follicular fluid. We evaluated sperm [Ca2+]i increase in response to P (0.1 micrograms/ml) in 19 normo- and 17 oligozoospermic subjects. The average percentage of [Ca2+]i increase over the basal level was significantly lower in spermatozoa from oligozoospermic subjects when compared to normozoospermic subjects (138.7 +/- 8.22% increase in oligo- versus 263.3 +/- 39.7% increase in normozoospermic subjects; P < 0.001). Progesterone-stimulated [Ca2+]i increase was significantly correlated with sperm motility (r = 0.54), sperm concentration (r = 0.96), and sperm morphology (% of normal forms) (r = 0.49). In addition P induced a significant increase of acrosome-reacted spermatozoa in normospermic patients (n = 10), whereas no significant effect was observed in spermatozoa from oligozoospermic men (n = 7). Taken together, these results indicate that spermatozoa from oligozoospermic men have a reduced ability to initiate the cascade of events that lead to the acrosome reaction in response to a physiological stimulus, such as P, and might contribute to explaining the reduced fertilizing capacity of these patients.


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