Samane Zeynodini,1,*
1. Department of nursing and midwifery, Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences, Rafsanjan, Iran
Introduction: Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common global sexual transmitted disease among men and women. Most studies have been focused on HPV relationship with female fertility, however few of them studied about HPV relationship with male fertility. The aim of this review is to find out the possible effect of HPV on semen as well as male fertility.
Methods: A review literature search of eligible studies was conducted in the PubMed database from 2014 to 2022 for studies evaluating the association between HPV and male fertility using the following search strategy: ("Human Papillomavirus " OR "HPV") AND ("male fertility" or "male infertility") AND ("semen") AND ("sperm") as used keywords. 12 studies (systematic reviews and meta-analysis) were found and 10 studies were included in this review.
Results: All of the studies reported higher percentage of infection in infertile men. In the presence of HPV in semen compare to its absent: five studies reported decreasing sperm motility ,three studies showed increasing anti-sperm antibodies (ASAS), two studies reported decreasing in sperm concentration ,changing in sperm morphology was reported in three studies ,only one study found apoptosis in sperm cells ,one study reported decreasing in sperm count while another study did not find any difference and one study showed asthenozoospermia.
Conclusion: According to the higher prevalence of seminal HPV in infertile men compared to general population and also HPV's effect on some sperm parameters, it seems that seminal HPV infection might be a significant risk factor for men infertility however more research is needed to confirm HPV association with male infertility.
Keywords: Human Papillomavirus, HPV, male fertility, semen, sperm