Use of Xenopus laevis frog egg extract in diagnosing human male unexplained infertility

Approximately one in six married couples find themselves involuntarily infertile. This ratio translates to between two and four million U.S. couples. Although numerous tests are available for diagnosing infertility problems, 5-10 percent of all couples who seek medical treatment are diagnosed with unexplained infertility. Several tests are presently available for diagnosing male infertility; however, none of the present procedures test for activation of the sperm nucleus following entry into the fertilized egg, a series of events critical for the entry of the zygote into the developmental program. We have developed an in vitro human sperm activation assay, using Xenopus laevis frog egg extract. When normal human sperm is permeabilized and then mixed with frog egg extract, the sperm nuclei decondense, synthesize DNA, and recondense during a three-hour time course. We have tested this assay's utility in diagnosing previously unexplained infertility. We found that 20 percent of the male infertility patients produced sperm that responded abnormally in the assay (95 percent confidence interval, 4-48 percent; n = 15), while sperm samples from 15 fertile males showed no abnormal responses (p = 0.0112). These preliminary results indicate that the human sperm activation assay may be a useful tool for diagnosing some cases of human infertility.