Meiotic studies of infertile men in case of non-obstructive azoospermia with normal karyotype and no microdeleted Y-chromosome precise the clinical couple management.

ABSTRACT

To identify meiotic criteria for infertility management in non-obstructive azoospermic men, a prospective and multicentric study was organized in Andrological Departments of Paris (France), Roma (Italy) and Budapest (Hungary). In 117 non-obstructive azoospermic men with normal karyotype and no Y-chromosome microdeletion, histology and meiotic studies on bilateral bipolar testicular biopsies were done. Histologically, 40 patients (34%) presented spermatocyte or spermatid arrest, 39 (33%) hypospermatogenesis whereas no meiotic cell could be observed in the remaining patients (33%). Cytogenetically, meiotic figures could only be obtained from the two first histological groups. Meiotic abnormalities were observed in a total of 44 patients (37.6%) including nine patients (7.7%) with severe class I and class IIB anomalies and 19 patients (16.2%) with class IIC environmentally linked meiotic abnormalities. These results provided essential clues for an accurate clinical management. For patients with no meiotic figures and patients with class I and class IIB anomalies, an hormonal stimulation is illusory and a sperm gift should be directly proposed. An hormonal stimulation should be proposed to all the other patients, either directly or following the treatment of the testicular microenvironment for the patients presenting class IIC anomalies. The genetic risk and possibility of prenatal chromosomal analysis in case of pregnancy should be clearly exposed to all the couples in all the cases where type IIA, III or IV anomalies are present. This therapeutical strategy has been applied to all the patients in our series.