The aim of our work was to define and better understand apoptosis in the sp
ermatozoa of normal subjects, infertile patients and patients affected by s
pecific tumoral diseases employing the method of the terminal deoxynucleoti
dyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labelling and confirming the results
by electron microscopy. We studied 23 healthy, normozoospermic subjects (g
roup A), 29 oligoasthenoteratozoospermic patients, affected by various andr
ological pathologies (group B), 28 patients with Hodgkin's disease (C1) and
30 patients with testicular cancer (C2), Our data demonstrate that the per
centage of apoptosis in normozoospermic subjects (group A) is significantly
lower than in all the other groups (B, C1, C2) (P < 0.001). This confirms
that high DNA fragmentation is one of the characteristics of spermatogeneti
c failure, The induction of apoptosis, which can also be a basic response t
o neoplastic disease, can even act right up to the mature male gamete, Our
results suggest that apoptosis could be the final result of various patholo
gies and of a deregulation of spermatogenesis control systems.