Fig. 3

Effects of hypotaurine supplementation on sperm nuclear quality after thawing. Values are mean ± SEM for the percentage (%) of spermatozoa with (A) decondensed chromatin, (B) fragmented DNA or (C) head vacuoles.”H -”: sperm cells were processed by density gradient centrifugation (DGC), washed and frozen without hypotaurine supplementation. “H +”: sperm cells were processed by DGC, washed and frozen in the presence of 50 mM hypotaurine. The following were measured after thawing: (A) Chromatin packaging: percentage of spermatozoa with decondensed chromatin evaluated by chromomycine A3 (% CMA3 + spermatozoa, n = 28); (B) DNA fragmentation estimated by the TUNEL assay (% TUNEL + spermatozoa, n = 19). (C) nuclear vacuolization estimated by MSOME (% spermatozoa with head vacuoles, n = 19). Conditions H+ and H- were compared using parametric or non-parametric tests according to statistical distribution and the number of subjects (n).* indicates a significant difference with p < 0.05 in comparison to the H- condition