The Evaluation of Sperm’s Hyaluronic Acid Binding Ability as a Predictive Value for the Clinical Success of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection

Selecting the best sperm for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) has been performed over the years using various approaches. We compared the clinical results between ICSI using sperm hyaluronic acid binding (HA-ICSI) and ICSI using conventional sperm selection (C-ICSI). Fifteen patients who received ICSI with HA-selected sperm and 15 patients who received conventional ICSI as a control group from June 2016 to January 2017 were enrolled in the study. We examined the clinical outcome of HA -ICSI and compared it to the clinical outcome of C-ICSI. Although there was no statistical difference in the fertilization rate (72.2 % vs 77.8 %) and high-quality embryo rate (67.4 % vs 79.1 %) between the two groups, the blastocyst rate in the HA-ICSI group (55.9 %) was statistically higher than that in the C-ICSI group (34.2 %) (p < 0.05). The implantation rate and pregnancy rate revealed no statistical difference. However, HA-ICSI improved the high-quality blastocyst rate in patients who had previously undertaken C-ICSI. Although further studies are necessary, HA-binding may be better than conventional sperm selection for obtaining high-quality sperm for ICSI.