Chromosomal Abnormalities in Infertile Males who are Candidates for Assisted Reproductive Techniques

The present study offers our contribution on the topic by a retrospective analysis of the prevalence of chromosomal abnormalities in a population of Iranian infertile men attending assisted reproduction programs. Cytogenetic analysis was performed according to standard methods on cultured cells obtained from the patient peripheral blood. In all, 874 files belonging to male partner of each couple were classified as follows: azoospermic, oligozoospermic and patients with low sperm quality in respect of morphology and motility. Chromosomal abnormalities were observed in 136(15.5%) individuals of the whole population studied including 12.0 %, 1.2 % and 2.0% of azoospermic, oligozoospermic and patients with low sperm quality, respectively. Of those, 116 (13.2%) had sex chromosome abnormalities and 20(2.3%) had autosomal chromosome abnormalities. We observed high frequency of aneuploidy and sex chromosomal mosaicism in azoospermic men and high structural aberrations in males with low sperm quality. We suggested that type of chromosomal abnormalities had an inverse relation to sperm count. So that, high chromosomal aneuploidy was detected in males with lower sperm count and high structural aberration was detected in males with low sperm quality. Chromosomal abnormalities are a major cause of male infertility. Consequently, Genetic testing and counselling is indicated for infertile men with abnormal semen parameters with either abnormal karyotype or normal karyotype before applying assisted reproductive techniques.