Introduction: The relationship between chronic prostatitis (CP) and fertility has been controversial for decades. We have previously shown the presence of an autoimmune response against prostate antigens (PA) in chronic prostatitis patients. Our main goal was to investigate whether CP could have deleterious effects on semen quality.
Patients and methods: we analyzed the presence of autoimmune responses against PA either in patients with chronic infectious prostatitis (CIP) or chronic non-infectious prostatitis (CNIP) and analyzed their semen quality and levels of seminal inflammatory cytokines.
Results: We demonstrated the presence of lymphocytes able to proliferate in response to human PA (PSA and PAP) only in a group of patients with CNIP. Elevated levels of INFg were detected only in supernatants samples from patients with positive proliferative response to PA. Interestingly, these patients showed striking alterations on their semen quality and increased levels of inflammatory cytokines (IL-1 and TNF-a) in their seminal plasma.
Conclusions: We found that INFg-secreting lymphocytes specific to PA are detected in 34% of the patients with CNIP and an association with the marked alterations observed in semen. These results argue in favor of the importance of prostate functionality for the quality of the semen.
