Evaluating the Functional Status of Spermatozoa in Smokers Using Hypo-osmotic Swelling Test

Background: Smoking damages sperm, making them less likely to fertilize eggs and making the embryos they do manage to create less likely to survive, as smoking degrades sperm protein needed for fertility and embryo survival. There exists a strong negative relationship between smoking and fertility due to the fact that genetic material in the sperm can be damaged by the chemicals in cigarette smoke. The available data do not conclusively demonstrate that smoking decreases male fertility. However, with much debate for its impact on various semen parameters, it is regarded as an infertility risk factor. Apart from genetic damage, we intended to study the membrane integrity of spermatozoa, a main factor in fertilization. Therefore, this study has hunted to assess the relationship between smoking and male infertility by evaluating the semen parameters and the membrane integrity of the spermatozoa by hypo-osmotic swelling test among different subgroups of smoker, as per smoking index and non-smoker infertile males. Methods: Membrane integrity of spermatozoa is analyzed by hypo-osmotic swelling test, the simplest and least expensive assay to assess the functional integrity of sperm-membrane among 204 infertile smokers who were subgrouped depending on the strength of smoking and 30 controls. Results: Infertile smokers showed decreased membrane integrity among asthenospermia, teratozoospermia, asthenoteratozoospermia, and oligospermic compared to infertile non-smokers with a significant variation (P<0.05) among the different subgroups and also with control group. Conclusion: Hypo-osmotic swelling test is an important tool for assessing the extent of membrane damage caused by smoking resulting in severity of infertility.