Abstract

HPV is well known as a potential cause of cervical cancer. Less well known is its link to temporal subfertility that is caused by binding of infectious virions to the spermatozoa’s head which induces sperm-DNA damage and causes a reduction in clinical pregnancy rates in women receiving HPV positive semen.

This impact on the global fertility burden remains greatly underestimated and underexplored. This risk of reduced fertility due to infectious HPV in sperm is especially important when donor sperm insemination is considered, sincetesting for the presence of HPV virions before use seems warranted.

We tested 514 donor sperm samples from 3 different sperm banks for 18 different HPV types.

Overall 3.9% (20/514) of tested donor sperm was positive for HPV, with different prevalence among the 3 different sperm banks (3.6% bank A, 3.1% bank B and 16.7% bank C). Also the HPV virion per spermatozoon ratio in donor samples was similar across the different sperm banks (95% CI 0,01 to 1,07 HPV virions/spermatozoon).

When HPV positive donor sperm was used, no clinical pregnancies resulted, whereas when HPV negative donor sperm was used the clinical pregnancy rate was 14.6%.

From both a cost/benefit and a safety point of view we recommend that donor sperm should always be tested for HPV before using it for insemination.