Sperm question

Hi Carole, I was just wondering... is it possible to tell the quality of sperm just by observing them under the microscope? I have been wondering about my previous donor cycle where 7 out of 8 of our embryos were abnormal. Although we 'blamed' the donor, I have been wondering whether it was something to do with my husband's sperm. However, no-one mentioned anything and I would have thought they would have if they had seen anything amiss.

So I was wondering whether it was possible to have great looking sperm, all actively swimming around in great abundance, but that are actually mostly chromosomally abnormal?

Thanks,

CT

Sperm abnormalities in the appearance of the sperm can be associated with chromosomal abnormalities. Here's a paper that talks about it in some detail http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1395314/. If your husband had an abnormal percentage of any of these physical sperm defects, they would have mentioned it. Humans in general have terrible looking sperm compared to other animals so even a normal semen analysis result on a human semen sample will have a number of obvious abnormalities that don't make the male less fertile. For example, less than 30% abnormal forms is considered Normal in a WHO analysis. Having said that, even a perfect looking sperm can harbor a genetic or chromosomal abnormality. The bottom line is that the appearance of a sperm does not tell us very much about whether it is chromosomally abnormal except for obvious defects like double heads (double chromosomes), or no real head (zero chromosomes). There are tests that analyze the DNA integrity of the sperm. Here's an ASRM article about them www.asrm.org/publications/detail.aspx?id=4003
The problem with these tests is that they test a population of sperm. If ICSI is being performed, unless there is a way to test the same sperm you are using in ICSI, information that 30% have DNA integrity issues really isn't helpful. There are some functional tests that may be more useful and can also be used to select sperm for ICSI. http://art.biocoat.com/products.htm#hba I don't have any financial interest in these products, but did use them for a clinical research study which I published http://www.fertstert.org/article/S00...405-4/abstract looking at how an abnormal result with this assay correlated with other lifestyle factors that we know negatively impact fertility.
Anyway, you can have more tests done but the value of these tests are controversial. Best Wishes, Carole
Carole Wegner, PhD, HCLD
President, Zygote Science, LLC.

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Thanks Carole, that's really helpful.