Impact of cryopreservation on spermatozoa from infertile men: implications for artificial insemination

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of cryopreservation-thawing on the quality of sperm from men with subfertile semen parameters. Twenty-seven patients with teratozoospermia, six of whom also had asthenozoospermia, were studied and their sperm parameters were compared to those of fertile donors (n = 71) in their fresh, post-thaw, and washed samples. After thawing, the percentage decrease in motility was significantly greater in patients than in donors, but the motility yield (post-thaw motility/prethaw motility) reached an average of 58% in the patient group vs. 68% in the donors (p = .02). No single characteristic of the fresh samples from patients or donors could significantly predict post-thaw outcome. For the patient group, however, multiple regression analysis provided a cutoff sperm concentration (50 x 10(6)/mL) and motility (40%) below which a very poor post-thaw recovery was obtained. The frozen-thawed-washed specimens had significantly higher velocity than the frozen-thawed samples, both in patients and donors. The results suggest that some patients with teratoasthenozoospermia yield acceptable sperm parameters after freezing-thawing-washing, and therefore these ejaculates could be used individually (or pooled) in artificial insemination.