Female fertility and donor insemination

Artificial insemination with donor semen (AID) frozen in 0.25-ml straws yielded an overall pregnancy rate of 64% in a series of 131 patients. The pregnancy rate was significantly higher in patients whose husbands were azoospermic (70%) than in women whose husbands were severely subfertile (48.8%) (P less than 0.02). Equivalent ages of patients as well as donor distribution between both groups were confirmed. This study brings evidence that patients turning to AID because of severe male subfertility represent a selected hypofertile population, from which the highly fertile females have disappeared through previous spontaneous conception.