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Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) as a Treatment for Infertile Women with Anti-sperm Antibody (ASA)

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Gamete Immunology

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Abstract

For infertile women with anti-sperm antibodies (ASAs), treatments such as condom therapy, abstinence, and steroid suppression therapy have been applied, and they resulted in a generally poor consequence. Some success has been achieved with intrauterine insemination (IUI), but not when serum ASA levels are high. There have been some reports that described unsuccessful application of IVF-ET for the treatment of infertile women with ASA. They presumed that these results underline the importance of using replacement serum in cases where the wife has significant sperm antibody levels in her serum.

After paying a special attention to remove the ASA adhered to cumulus cells around oocytes and avoiding the contamination of blood in the aspirated follicular fluid and moreover removing the antibodies in the follicular fluid by transferring oocytes several times to the new culture medium with replacement serum that was added to the culture medium, fertilization and cleavage rates of mature oocytes from the patients with ASA were not different from those in patients without the antibodies. Therefore, each infertile woman entering an IVF-ET program should have the ASA assay performed as a preliminary screening. It is also important that substitution of the patients’ serum by replacement serum in the fertilization and embryo growth media may prove to be an effective means of improving IVF treatment for women with ASA.

For infertile women with sperm-immobilizing antibodies, it is important to assess the SI50 titers by the quantitative method to select appropriate treatments. A strategy for the treatment of infertile women with sperm-immobilizing antibodies was suggested. The strategy emphasizes the importance of assessing SI50 titers to select treatments for infertile women with sperm-immobilizing antibodies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, Hyogo Medical University, Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan

    Hiroaki Shibahara

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  1. Hiroaki Shibahara
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Correspondence to Hiroaki Shibahara .

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  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, Hyogo Medical University, Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan

    Hiroaki Shibahara

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, Hyogo Medical University, Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan

    Akiko Hasegawa

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Shibahara, H. (2022). Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) as a Treatment for Infertile Women with Anti-sperm Antibody (ASA). In: Shibahara, H., Hasegawa, A. (eds) Gamete Immunology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9625-1_6

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