Application of computer-aided sperm analysis (CASA) for detecting sperm-immobilizing antibody.

Abstract

Since the 1970s, anti-sperm antibodies have been studied as a pathogenic factor contributing to infertility. The complement-dependent sperm-immobilization test (SIT) and quantitative SIT have been used as effective tools for detecting anti-sperm antibodies in clinical settings. These tests have been carried out traditionally by manually counting the number of motile sperm through eye estimation. In this study, we developed a novel method using computer-aided sperm analysis. The results were compared with those obtained by the traditional method. The results were identical and 25 of 78 samples tested were positive and 53 samples were negative for sperm-immobilizing (SI) antibodies based on both methods. For SI-positive samples, the values of SI50 obtained using the two methods correlated closely with high co-efficiency. Using the novel method, manually counting the number of motile spermatozoa becomes unnecessary. The novel method presented here will increase the objectivity and convenience of using the SIT as a clinical indicator.