The Effect of Chronic Bacterial Prostatitis on Semen Quality in Adult Men: A Meta-Analysis of Case-control Studies

Chronic bacterial prostatitis (CBP) is caused by bacterial infection and maintains a condition of lower urinary tract infection. It may be a cause of male infertility. However, studies showed inconsistent results regarding the effect of CBP on several parameters of semen. Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effect of CBP on basic semen parameters. A systematic review was conducted with Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, and two Chinese databases (CNKI and WANG FANG) to identify relevant studies that involved the effect of CBP on semen parameters up to July 2014. Both RevMan5.2 and STATA 12.0 software were used for the statistical analysis. Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, seven studies were included. The study illustrated that sperm vitality, sperm total motility, and the percentage of progressively motile sperm from CBP patients were significantly lower than controls (SMD(95%CI) -0.81[-1.14, -0.47], -1.00[-1.28, -0.73], -0.41 [-0.70, -0.12], P<0.05, respectively). However, CBP had no significant effect on semen volume, sperm concentration and the duration of semen liquefaction. In summary, our study revealed that there was a significant negative effect of CBP on sperm vitality, sperm total motility, and the percentage of progressively motile sperm. Additional, studies with larger number of subjects are needed.