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Background: The role of male factor with respect to sperm morphology, progressive motility, and density is studied under in vitro conditions., Methods: The semen samples of 67 males participating in an in vitro fertilization program were evaluated by the conventional WHO criteria of spermatogram, by morphology evaluation using strict criteria (MEUSC), and by the hypoosmotic swelling test (HOST). All sperm tests were performed in the original semen sample as delivered on the day of IVF, before further sperm treatment. The correlations between these parameters and the fertilization outcome were evaluated and their predictive values were calculated., Results: When the patients were divided into two groups, namely, fertile (fertilization rate per oocyte greater than 0%) and infertile (fertilization rate per oocyte = 0%), only mean sperm density and morphology were significantly different between the groups (P less than 0.05). The correlation with fertilization rate in vitro was in favor of MEUSC., Conclusions: Our results show that the HOST is inferior to MEUSC and conventional WHO sperm analysis in predicting fertilization in vitro.

Tripronuclear zygotes obtained from a clinical IVF program were studied cytogenetically. Successful analysis was possible of 42 specimens at the zygote stage and 21 embryos after the first or second cleavage division. In the majority of zygotes (88%) the expected triploidy was confirmed, whereas only 14% of embryos had solely triploid cells. Therefore it is concluded that after tripolar cleavage division, many different types of mosaicism may originate from irregular chromosome distributions. Since the findings in individual blastomeres in embryos resulting from multipronuclear zygotes do not reflect the genetic content of the whole embryo, these embryos are less suitable in a model system for preimplantion diagnosis. The distribution of the sex chromosomal types (XXX, XXY, and XYY) confirmed theoretical expectations. Since in abortion material or in liveborn triploidy cases, the XYY karyotype is hardly ever observed, this indicates that most likely the 69,XYY karyotype has a very high embryonic mortality.