CORRELATION BETWEEN THE CONCENTRATION OF β-TRACE PROTEIN AND THE NUMBER OF SPERMATOZOA IN HUMAN SEMEN

Departments of Neurology and Forensic Medicine, University Hospital, S-221 85 Lund, Sweden (Received 17 th June 1974) Beta-trace protein (β-TP) is predominantly associated with the central nervous system (CNS) and was first discovered in concentrated cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) by Clausen (1961). The protein has a low molecular weight of 31,000 and is present in high concentration in the CSF (0·8 to 3·9 mg/100 ml), constituting about 7% of the total CSF protein concentration (Link, 1967). By contrast, the serum concentration of the protein is low (0·26 to 0·60 mg/100 ml) and β-TP constitutes only 1/20,000 of the total serum protein content (Olsson, Link & Nosslin, 1973). The protein is also found in urine (Hochwald & Thorbecke, 1962), in which the daily excretion is below 9·5 mg (Ericsson, Link & Zettervall, 1969), as well as in various organ extracts, e.g. brain, kidney, pancreas and genital organs (Laterre, Heremans & Carbonara, 1964;