An Investigation of Bacterial Infection of Seminal Fluid in Men with Infertility with Unknown Etiology

One of the most important factors that cause infertility in men is urogenital infections. In most cases, these infections cause impairment in parameters, (such as sperm count, motility, viability, and morphology) and sperm function, and also induction of inflammation in epididymis and prostate gland is occurred. Therefore, the identification of bacterial species causing infection and administration of appropriate antibiotic therapy can result in improvement of sperm parameters and consequently fertility. This study was performed with the purpose of determining the frequency of bacterial infection of seminal fluid in infertile men with unknown etiology. In this descriptive-analytical study, seminal fluid of 65 infertile men with unknown cause referred to Yazd Institute for Reproductive Sciences, were studied. At first, seminal fluid analysis was performed according to WHO guideline. Then, blood agar and EMB (eosin methylene blue) culture media were used for detection of bacterial infection. in semen. Supplementary microbial tests were used to detect bacterial species. Pearson correlation test was used to determine the correlation between sperm parameters, between the two groups with and without infection. Significance level was considered less than 0.05. In this study, 40 specimens had bacterial infection. Seven different bacterial species were detected in these specimens, of which the staphylococcus aureus had the highest incidence, 16.9%, and pseudomonas and enterococcus had the lowest incidence, 1.5%. According to the high incidence of seminal infection in infertile men, use of microbial tests for infertile men with unknown etiology and attempting to treat urogenital infection are suggested.