Received November 18, 2013
Accepted February 17, 2013

Purpose: To investigate the influence of an oral antioxidative and micronutrient supplementation on semen quality assessed by MSOME (motile sperm organelle morphology examination) criteria in a collective of in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients. Methods: Sperm analysis of 160 IVF patients was evaluated 2-12 months before undergoing IVF/IMSI (intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injec- tion) cycle. The following parameters were analyzed: semen volume, sperm concentration, motility and morphology according to MSOME criteria. Patients were grouped according to the WHO criteria into normozoospermic, oligoasthenoteratozoospermic (OAT) oligo and asthenozoospermic men, respectively. Between first and second semen analysis, patients were treated orally with a dietary antioxidative supplement. The Student’s t-test was used to evaluate the significance of data. Results: In the total number of patients we found a significant reduction in the percentage of immotile sperms and a highly significant increase of total sperm motility after antioxidative therapy. We also observed substantial improvement of motility, the sperm concentration as well as sperm morphology (according to MSOME criteria) in the semen of oligozoospermic, asthenozoospermic and OAT patients. For normozoospermic patients, we found almost no significant increase in sperm parameters. Conclusions: The results display a considerable improvement in semen quality, such as motility, sperm concentration and morphology after dietary supplementation, notably in IVF patients with poor semen quality. Our findings suggest that micronutrient supplementation might be generally beneficial for semen quality in men undergoing ART, but mostly in those with a higher grade of alterations in their sperm parameters.