Objective: To investigate the effects of Compound Amino Acid Capsules (CAAC) for obstructive azoospermia (OA) patients undergoing percutaneous epididymal sperm aspiration (PESA) and ICSI.
Methods: We retrospectively studied 134 cycles of PESA-ICSI in OA males, who were divided into a CAAC group (n = 64) and a control group (n = 70), the former, aged (32.1 ± 5.7) years, treated with CAAC for 3 months before PESA-ICSI while the latter, aged (32.3 ± 4.5) years, left untreated. We compared the rates fertilization, cleavage, high-quality embryos and blastocyst formation between the two groups of patients.
Results: Compared with the control, the CAAC group achieved significantly higher rates of high-quality embryos (［67.4 ± 13.8］% vs ［74.3 ± 12.6］%, P < 0.05) and blastocyst formation (［60.3±14.2］% vs ［66.8±14.6］%, P < 0.05), but no statistically significant differences were observed between the two groups in the ages of the males and females, number of oocytes retrieved, or the rates of fertilization and cleavage.
Conclusions: Medication of Compound Amino Acid Capsules can effectively improve the rates of high-quality embryos and blastocyst formation in obstructive azoospermia patients undergoing PESA-ICSI.
Keywords: blastocyst formation; high-quality embryo; intracytoplasmic sperm injection; obstructive azoospermia; Compound Amino Acid Capsules.