Dear Editor,rnIt is well-established that human papillomavirus (HPV)-infection represents one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in both males and females worldwide.1 Although HPV has been extensively investigated in oncology due to its causal role in cervical and penile carcinogenesis,and also the attachment of HPV to the equatorial region of the sperm head in semen has been clearly observed via optimized in situ hybridization technology described by Schillaci et al.,2 relatively little attention has been paid to the issue whether the presence of HPV in semen has significance and consequence for sperm dysfunction and male infertility.3 In recent times,a well-designed case-control study by Yang et al.4 has comprehensively addressed the clear correlation between HPV sperm infection and male infertility.In this original article,the authors first analyzed the HPV-infection rates in 1138 subjects and demonstrated that the infection rate was 17.4％ in the case group (615 infertile males) and 6.7％ in the control group (523 fertile males).Later,they conducted the analyses of HPV-positive and HPV-negative semen parameters in the case and control group,respectively.After carefully evaluating the semen volume,pH,concentration,virility,progressive motility (PR) and the normal sperm morphology rate in each pair group,they reached the conclusion that HPV-infection decreased both sperm PR and the normal morphology rate in a statistically significant manner (P ＜ 0.05),which may result in impaired male fertility or even infertility.In contrast,the indirect factors such as semen volume,pH and sperm concentration showed no statistically significant differences among each group (P ＞ 0.05).