Meiotic studies in a series of 1100 infertile and sterile males.

Meiotic studies have been carried out in a series of 1100 infertile and sterile males. Of these, 599 cases have been studied in testicular biopsy, and 501, in semen samples. This is the largest meiotic series published so far. The incidence of meiotic anomalies was 4.3%. The most frequent chromosome abnormality was desynapsis (3.7%). However, the number of cases with a meiotic arrest, usually due (73.9%) to synaptic anomalies in prophase I, was much higher (18.4%). An attempt is made to correlate the incidence of meiotic anomalies with the results of semen analysis. We discuss the prognosis of desynapsis, based on 41 cases studied, and reevaluate the results obtained in semen samples as compared with our previous results.