OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of magnified bilateral varicocele ligation on the semen quality and natural paternity rate in subfertile men, based on the sum of varicocele grading. PATIENTS AND METHODS In a prospective longitudinal study, 78 patients (mean age 36.5 years, range 21-56) with a total of 156 varicoceles underwent bilateral varicocele ligation. Patients included had bilateral, p...

Dr. Sandro Esteves and collegues, from Brazil, performed on page xx at this issue of the International Braz J Urol an elegant review that discuss how the new World Health Organization (WHO) criteria for seminal parameters could affect the clinical management of men presenting with male infertility. The authors emphasized the factors that limit the use of seminal parameters as a surrogate for ma...

BACKGROUND Elevated early follicular phase (EFP) FSH is frequently observed in subfertile patients. In these women, temporary normalization of FSH concentrations is known to occur. We studied the complete endocrine cycle profile of subfertile young women with elevated basal FSH compared with controls. METHODS Daily bloodsampling and ultrasound monitoring in the follicular phase was performed in...

BACKGROUND We evaluated whether measuring chlamydia genus- and species-specific immunoglobulin (Ig) G antibodies might improve the predictive value of C. trachomatis antibody testing (CAT) in screening for distal tubal pathology (DTP). METHODS Serum of 313 subfertile women was tested for the presence of species-specific antibodies to C. trachomatis, C. pneumoniae and C. psittaci and genus-spe...

The aim of the study was to determine the semen parameters of a proven fertile population and to compare these parameters with that of a subfertile group in the same region. Sixty-nine fertile male patients were studied and compared with 93 patients recruited at an infertility clinic. A sub-sample of patients was matched according to age. Sixty-one were studied in the fertile group and 62 in th...

PURPOSE To elucidate the impact of surgical varicocele repair on the pregnancy rate through new meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials that compared surgical varicocele repair and observation. MATERIALS AND METHODS The PubMed and Embase online databases were searched for studies released before December 2012. References were manually reviewed, and two researchers independently extracted ...

The Sertoli cell is important for endocrine and paracrine control of spermatogenesis. Functions attributed to Sertoli cells are: (1) supportive and trophic functions for the cells of the seminiferous epithelium, (2) transport of mature spermatids towards the lumen of seminiferous tubules, (3) secretion of androgen binding protein, (4) production of substances with endocrine or paracrine action ...

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...