The Effect of Teratozoospermia on Sex Chromosomes in Human Embryos

Pregnancy Outcomes in Double Stimulation versus Two Consecutive Mild Stimulations for IVF in Poor Ovarian Responders

To compare pregnancy outcomes between double stimulation (DouStim) and two consecutive mild stimulations in poor ovarian responders, this study retrospectively analyzed 281 patients diagnosed as having poor ovarian response (POR) who underwent oocytes retrieval for in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) from January 2018 to December 2020. They were divided into two groups: the DouStim group (n = 89) and the two consecutive mild stimulations group (n = 192). The results illustrated that there were no significant differences in the number of oocytes and 2PNs between the two groups. The number of frozen embryos [1 (0, 2) versus 1(0, 2)] was significantly lower and the proportion of patients without frozen embryos (39.3% versus 26.0%) was significantly higher in the DouStim group than in the two consecutive mild stimulations group (p < 0.05). There were no significant differences in the clinical pregnancy rate (CPR) and the cumulative live birth rate (CLBR) between the two groups (p > 0.05). The intra-subgroup comparison showed that in young POR patients under 35 years old, there were no significant differences in clinical indicators and pregnancy outcomes (p > 0.05). In elderly POR patients aged 35 years and above, the number of frozen embryos [1 (0, 1.5) versus 1 (0.25, 2)] (p < 0.01) was significantly lower in the DouStim group than in the two consecutive mild stimulations group, but the pregnancy outcomes were not significantly different (p > 0.05). In conclusion, the DouStim protocol is inferior to the two consecutive mild stimulations protocol in terms of the number of frozen embryos, which mainly occurs in elderly patients, but there is no difference in pregnancy outcomes between the two protocols.

A Comparative Cross-Platform Analysis to Identify Potential Biomarker Genes for Evaluation of Teratozoospermia and Azoospermia

Male infertility is a global public health concern. Teratozoospermia is a qualitative anomaly of spermatozoa morphology, contributing significantly to male infertility, whereas azoospermia is the complete absence of spermatozoa in the ejaculate. Thus, there is a serious need for unveiling the common origin and/or connection between both of these diseases, if any. This study aims to identify common potential biomarker genes of these two diseases via an in silico approach using a meta-analysis of microarray data. In this study, a differential expression analysis of genes was performed on four publicly available RNA microarray datasets, two each from teratozoospermia (GSE6872 and GSE6967) and azoospermia (GSE145467 and GSE25518). From the analysis, 118 DEGs were found to be common to teratozoospermia and azoospermia, and, interestingly, sperm autoantigenic protein 17 (SPA17) was found to possess the highest fold change value among all the DEGs (9.471), while coiled-coil domain-containing 90B (CCDC90B) and coiled-coil domain-containing 91 (CCDC91) genes were found to be common among three of analyses, i.e., Network Analyst, ExAtlas, and GEO2R. This observation indicates that SPA17, CCDC90B, and CCDC91 genes might have significant roles to play as potential biomarkers for teratozoospermia and azoospermia. Thus, our study opens a new window of research in this area and can provide an important theoretical basis for the diagnosis and treatment of both these diseases.