Fertility assessment in non-infertile HIV-infected women and their partners

• Published in: Reproductive biomedicine online 2007, Vol.14 (4), p.488-494
• Main Authors: Coll, O, Lopez, M, Vidal, R, Figueras, F, Suy, A, Hernandez, S, Loncà, M, Palacio, M, Martinez, E, Vernaeve, V
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Cohort Studies; Counseling; counselling; Cross-Sectional Studies; Fallopian tubes; Female; Fertility; HIV; HIV Infections - complications; HIV Seropositivity - complications; Humans; infertility; Infertility - etiology; Infertility - virology; Male; Obstetrics and Gynecology; Prevalence; Semen - metabolism; Semen - virology; sperm quality; Spermatozoa - pathology
• ISSN: 1472-6483; 1472-6491
• DOI: 10.1016/S1472-6483(10)60897-8

Abstract The objective of the study was to assess the fertility of non-infertile couples seeking pregnancy in whom the woman was HIV infected. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted between January 1998 and March 2005. A standardized fertility assessment was performed in all the included couples. A total of 130 women and 121 men were evaluated. Their median age was 34 years (range 22–43). Only 7.2% of the women were severely immunocompromised. The majority of women had regular cycles. Only one woman had an active sexually transmitted disease at the time of evaluation. A tubal occlusion on hysterosalpingogram was present in 27.8% of the women with no proven fertility. In 50.5% of the women, hepatitis C virus co-infection was present. One-third of the male partners (38/121) was infected with HIV. Abnormal semen parameters were observed in 83.4% of HIV-infected and 41.7% of HIV-uninfected partners (OR = 7; 95% CI = 2.1–23). It is concluded that the great majority of the HIV-infected women seeking pregnancy had a good infection status. Because in many of the couples, the women presented unexplained tubal occlusions and the men presented semen alterations, a hysterosalpingography and semen analysis should be part of the preconceptional investigations.