Severe teratospermia in an infertile man with bronchiectasis

Morphologic examination of sperm samples from an infertile man with bronchiectasis revealed a severe teratospermia characterized by rare abnormalities that were present in most of his spermatozoa. These abnormalities were represented by round-headed spermatozoa, changes in chromatin condensation, acrosomal alterations, multiple tails, and complete subcellular derangement. The similarity between the above-reported abnormalities and those observed in various species of laboratory animals strongly suggests that the observed defects might be the result of a defective function of the manchette during spermiogenesis. The absence of specific defects of the axonemal morphologic features in sperm tails and in respiratory cilia, together with some laboratory data, suggests that association between infertility and bronchiectasis cannot be related, in our patient, to a generalized syndrome.