ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: It has been widely demonstrated that there is an increased level of sperm autoantibodies (SAA) in infertile than in normal fertile men, suggesting this could be a cause of infertility. This study was designed to correlate the direct agglutination methods of TAC II (a kit developed and validated by our staff) and the MAR-Screen (Fertility Technologies, Natick M.A., Bioscreen Inc.). METHODS: 645 semen samples from patients who consulted for infertility at the Infertility and Urology services of the Provincial del Centenario and Eva Perón de Granadero Baigorria teaching hospitals in Rosario (Argentina) and 30 fertile controls were analyzed. RESULTS: Statistical analysis showed a sensitivity of 87%, a specificity of 100%, a positive predictive value of 100% and a negative predictive value of 98% for TAC II. CONCLUSIONS: We recommend the use of TAC II. It has similar methodological characteristics as the MAR-Screen method and offers some advantages, such as the possibility to perform analysis on frozen sperm samples and oligospermic patients, since it is not necessary for the spermatozoa to be moving. Furthermore, the test has a higher immunological specificity because spermatozoa are washed.
