Introduction: High sperm DNA fragmentation Index (DFI) is related to male infertility and was previously suggested to be associated with poor outcome after IVF.
Aim: To determine if sperm DFI impacts blastocyst aneuploidy rate or morphological grade.
Materials & Methods: In this retrospective clinical study we included infertile couples in whom DFI was tested prior to IVF-Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS) by array Comprehensive Genomic Hybridization (a-CGH).
Results: The current study included 134 couples who underwent 177 IVF-ICSI-PGS cycles between January 1st, 2014 and March 31st, 2016. Group 1 (DFI>30%) encompassed 27 couples who underwent 35 cycles; Group 2 (DFI 15-30%) included 43 couples and 58 cycles; group 3 (DFI<15%) included 64 couples and 84 cycles. Male partners within group 1 were older (45.2 compared to 40.6 and 38.4 years respectively, p<0.05), had higher BMI (32.4 compared to 26.6 and 25.8 respectively, p<0.05) as well as lower sperm count and motility (45*106/ml and 35.5%, respectively) compared to groups 2 (61.8*106/ml and 46.6%, respectively) and 3 (77.1*106/ml and 55.2%, respectively, p<0.05). Female and embryo development parameters were similar. Total numbers of biopsied blastocysts were 95, 135 and 175 in groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively. PGS revealed comparable euploidy rate of 46-48% in all groups, with a similar morphological classification. Using logistic regression, both male and female ages were associated with blastocyst euploidy (OR 0.95, CI 0.93-0.98, p=0.001 and OR 0.91, CI 0.85-0.97, p=0.006, respectively).
Conclusions: We found no correlation between sperm DNA fragmentation and either blastocyst euploidy rate or morphological grading.