Can blood and semen presepsin levels in males predict pregnancy in couples undergoing intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection?

Objective: to determine whether semen and plasma presepsin values measured in men with normozoospermia and oligoasthenospermia undergoing invitro-fertilization would be helpful in predicting ongoing pregnancy and live birth. methods: group-i was defined as patients who had pregnancy after treatment and group-ii comprised those with no pregnancy. semen and blood presepsin values were subsequently compared between the groups. parametric comparisons were performed using student’s t-test,and non-parametric comparisons were conducted using the mann-whitney u test. results: there were 42 patients in group-i and 72 in group-ii. in the context of successful pregnancy and live birth,semen presepsin values were statistically significantly higher in group-i than in group-ii (p= 0.004 and p= 0.037,respectively). the most appropriate semen presepsin cut-off value for predicting both ongoing pregnancy and live birth was calculated as 199 pg/ml. accordingly,their sensitivity was 64.5% to 59.3%,their specificity was 57.0% to 54.2%,and their positive predictive value was 37.0% to 29.6%,respectively; their negative predictive value was 80.4% in both instances. conclusion: semen presepsin values could be a new marker that may enable the prediction of successful pregnancy and/or live birth. its negative predictive values are especially high. © 2016,professional medical publications. all rights reserved.