Effect of Selenium on Sperm Parameters and DNA Fragmentation in Infertile Men

Background: Infertility is an important medical and social problem that has an impact on well-being. A significant devel-opment in the last 10 years in the study of human infertility has been the discovery that oxidative sperm DNA damage has a critical role in the etiology of poor semen quality and male infertility. It is now documented that selenium as a potent an-tioxidant protect the organism against oxidative stress via the inhibition of propagation of ROS reactions. We explored the efficacy of selenium for improving sperm parameters and DNA fragmentation in infertile men.Materials and Methods: The study included 353 infertile men with idiopathic oligoasthenoteratospermia who received supplemental daily selenium( 400 μg) for at least 100 days. The mean age of cases was 28.5 years (range 20–45), and the me-dian age was 30 years. These cases had presented with male factor infertility (primary or secondary) for at least 1 year. The longest and shortest duration of infertility was 10 years and 1 year, respectively. The median time of diagnosis of infertility was 1 year with a mean of 2.5 years.Results: We observed 258 cases total improvement in sperm motility, morphology, count and DNA fragmentation in com-parison with no treatment. No response to treatment occurred in 95 cases after 14 weeks of antioxidant therapy. On the basis of paired t-test results, antioxidant therapy with oral selenium was effective for treatment of oligoasthenoteratospermia.Conclusion: Supplemental selenium may improve semen quality and have beneficial and protective effects, especially on sperm motility . We advocate their use for the treatment of idiopathic male infertility diagnosed with oligoasthenoterato-spermia or asthenospermia in semen analysis.

Keywords:

Sperm , Infertility , Selenium , Teratospermia , Asthe-nospermia