FUNCTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMAN EPIDIDYMAL SPERMATOZOA RETRIEVED BY TRANSCUTANEOUS ASPIRATION

The present paper describes the development of a simple. repeatable te chnique for transcutaneous aspiration of epididymal spermatozoa in pat ients with inoperable excretory azoospermia. Some functional and struc tural parameters of the retrieved spermatozoa were also evaluated. Epi didymal spermatozoa from patients and ejaculated spermatozoa from fert ile donors showed similar percentages of acrosome-reacted cells after incubation for 6 or 15 h in capacitating medium. Penetration of zona-f ree hamster oocytes, expressed as the percentage of penetrated ova, wa s significally lower (p < 0.01) for spermatozoa from patients than for ejaculated spermatozoa from fertile donors. The percentage of epididy mal spermatozoa with stable nuclei in sodium dodecyl sulphate was lowe r (p < 0.001) than for ejaculated spermatozoa from fertile donors. A p ositive linear correlation (r = 0.74, p < 0.005) was evident between t he oocyte penetration rate and the percentage of spermatozoa with stab le nuclei. In conclusion the percutaneous retrieval of epididymal sper matozoa in excretory azoospermia allows collection of motile spermatoz oa, which can be evaluated for their structural and functional charact eristics before repetition of the technique for retrieval of spermatoz oa for assisted fertilization techniques.