Asthenozoospermia (AS) is a common cause of human male infertility. In one study, more than 80% of the samples from infertile men had reduced sperm motility. Seminal plasma is a mixture of secretions from the testis, epididymis and several male accessory glands, including the prostate, seminal vesicles and Cowper's gland. Studies have shown that seminal plasma contains proteins that are importa...

Background: Defective sperm function is now recognized as one of the most important causes of male infertility. Lipid peroxidation (LPO) is known to cause various impairments of sperm cells and may play a major role in the etiology of male infertility. Malondialdehyde (MDA) is one of the final products of lipid peroxidation in seminal plasma. Seminal plasma possesses a rich source of different ...

The human cathelicidin, hCAP-18, is expressed both in neutrophils and in epithelial cells. hCAP-18 is processed to the antimicrobial peptide LL-37 by proteinase 3 in neutrophils. hCAP-18 is highly expressed in the epididymis with a subsequent high concentration in seminal plasma where the protein is present in its unprocessed and antimicrobially inactive form. We report here that hCAP-18 in sem...

BACKGROUND TEX101 is a cell membrane protein exclusively expressed by testicular germ cells and shed into seminal plasma. We previously verified human TEX101 as a biomarker for the differential diagnosis of azoospermia, and developed a first-of-its-kind TEX101 ELISA. To demonstrate the clinical utility of TEX101, in this work we aimed at evaluating ELISA performance in a large population of fer...

Spermatozoa generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) in physiological amounts which play a role in sperm functions during sperm capacitation acrosome reaction (AR) and oocyte fusion. In addition damaged sperm are likely to be the source of ROS. The most important ROS produced by human sperm are hydrogen peroxide superoxide anion and hydroxyl radicals. Besides human seminal plasma and sperm posses...

OBJECTIVES To examine the clinical value of six seminal plasma components in the evaluation of sperm quality and in the differential diagnosis of men with infertility. METHODS We analyzed 202 seminal plasmas for prostate-specific antigen, glucose, pepsinogen C, insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3, prostaglandin D synthase (PGDS), and BRCA1-like immunoreactive protein (BRCA1-LIP) usin...