Apoptosis in seminiferous tubules of human in normal and in idiopathic infertility

The purpose of this study was to assess the level of apoptosis in cells of human seminiferous tubules in normal and pathological spermatogenesis by revealing the proportion of immunostaining cells for caspase-9 and -3 and by comparing the expression of pro-apoptotic (BAK and BAX) and anti-apoptotic genes (BCL2 and BCLW). A retrospective study involved men (n = 42) who complained of childlessness in marriage for 2 years with a diagnosis of idiopathic infertility, established after physical, genetic, biochemical (hormones) and cytological (spermogram) analyzis. The biopsies of the testes as well as the autopsy material of men 22—35 (n = 10), 64—75 (n = 10) and 75—90 (n = 10) years were studied using the immunohistochemical method (caspase-9 and -3) and PCR-RT. The marking level for caspase-9 in spermatogonies with normal spermatogenesis is approximately at the same level (the proportion of stained spermatogonies is 39.5 0.33 [%] in young men, 35.6 0.44 [%] in the elderly, and 32.2 0.28 [%] in