New frontiers in the treatment of male sterility

Male factor responsibility in couple infertility has been exponentially increasing in recent years, due both to improved diagnostic techniques and to the important role of lesive factors, mainly environmental, on reproductive male function. Therefore, male infertility therapy is one of the most challenging topics of modern clinical medicine. Unfortunately, however, 30% of cases of male infertility must still be classified as "idiopathic." In these cases, no "causal" treatments can be used but only empiric treatments. These are lacking of an etiopathogenetic basis, and often result from theoretical concepts without a proven statistical effectiveness. These facts have somehow allowed the explosive development of the assisted reproduction techniques (ART). Andrologist's therapeutic strategies have so changed and are no longer aimed, as in the past, to achieve an increase in the spermatozoa number, but rather to improve the "quality" of semen, that is, the "fertility potential."