Fereshteh Aliakbari
1 
, Neda Taghizabet
1 , Fatemeh Rezaei-Tazangi
2 , Ebrahim Kharazi Nejad
3* 1 Men’s Health and Reproductive Health Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2 Department of Anatomical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
3 Abadan School of Medical Sciences, Abadan, Iran
Abstract
Seminal infections were considered to be an etiologic factor of male infertility. Semen washing is used as an appropriate technique in artificial reproductive technology (ART) for serodiscordant couples when the partner of male is contaminated. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of semen washing methods in reducing the transmission of viral infections in ART. In this narrative review we investigated accessible information from Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, IranMedex, Irandoc, Magiran, SID, MEDLIB and Scientific Information Database until 2019. The MeSH terms of semen washing, HIV, assisted reproduction, serodiscordant, and virus transmission were used. According to the search strategy, 89 articles were discovered. After checking the titles, abstracts and manuscripts, a collection of 45 papers were chosen pursuant to the suitability indexes. The studies were performed around different categories of semen washing (swim up, density gradient) in serodiscordant couples. Some studies highlighted that semen washings can completely prevent viral transmission, but a few do not believe this claim. However, scientific researchers have revealed that sperm washing may diminish the possibility of infection in serodiscordant couples where the male partner is infected. Swim up in combination with density gradient is a suitable method to diminish the transmission of infections.