f Akbarian - Department of Reproductive Biotechnology, Reproductive Bio-medicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Biotechnology, ACECR, Isfahan, Iran
M Tavalaee - Department of Reproductive Biotechnology, Reproductive Bio-medicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Biotechnology, ACECR, Isfahan, Iran
MH Nasr Esfahani - Department of Reproductive Biotechnology, Reproductive Bio-medicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Biotechnology, ACECR, Isfahan, Iran. Isfahan Fertility and Infertility Center, Isfahan, Iran

Background: Sperm preparation procedure is one of the most important steps before insemination during intra cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) which is mainly performed through density gradient centrifugation (DGC) technique and swim up method. These methods select sperms based on viability and normal morphology but they cannot separate healthy sperms from DNA damaged spermatozoa. Zeta potential and magnetic activated cell sorter (MACS) are two novel sperm selection procedures which have recently used for ICSI and act on the basis of membrane surface charge and surface apoptotic marker in infertile men respectively. In this study we aimed to compare sperm functional tests between two novel sperm selection pro-cedures.Materials and Methods: Semen samples were collected from 20 infertile men and each sample was divided into three sec-tion. First section was washed with Ham’s F10+10 % albu-min (as unprocessed sample), second section was used for the MACS-DGC procedure and the third section was subjected to DGC- Zeta procedure. Percentage of sperm with abnormal morphology (papanicolaou staining), protamine deficiency (Chromomycin A3 staining) and DNA fragmentation (TUNEL staining) were evaluated on each section and the final results were compared between sections.Results: The sperms isolated by MACS and Zeta procedures had significantly lower percentage of sperm with abnormal morphology, DNA fragmentation and protamine deficiency compared to unprocessed section (P<0.05), but they did not have significant differences with each other.Conclusion: The result of this study recommended that using these novel sperm selection procedures along with DGC could be beneficial for treatment of infertile men with high percentage of protamine deficiency and DNA fragmentation.

Zeta Method, MACS Method, Protamine Deficiency, DNA Fragmentation, Morphology