O-2: Prospective Evaluation of the ThreatRelated to the Use of Seminal Fractions fromHepatitis C Virus-Infected Men in Assisted ReproductiveTechniques

Background: The risk of hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission during assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs) is still disputed and no report concerning its prospective evaluation is available. The aim of this 4-year follow-up multicentre study that enrolled 86 HCV-serodiscordant couples was to determine whether a sperm-processing method was able to reduce levels of HCV in semen and the risk of HCV transmission to the newborn. Materials and Methods: All the men were chronically infected by HCV and 10 of them by human immunodeficiency virus. A total of 181 seminal plasmas and 153 sperm fractions were tested for the presence of HCV RNA.Results: HCV RNA tested positive in 20.4% of the seminal samples. All of the 153 final sperm fractions tested negative for HCV. The detection of HCV RNA in semen was significantly correlated with a high viral load in blood (p