Post Date April, 15 2023
Currently, many laboratories use guidelines developed by the WHO 50 years ago to determine whether men have fertility. It stipulates that a "normal" sperm sample should contain at least 20 million sperm per milliliter of semen, and at least 50% of the sperm should be active.
David Guzick, director of obstetrics and gynecology at Rochester University Medical Center, and his colleagues have raised objections to the WHO standards: we have introduced this vague concept to replace the existing absolute concept of "fertility and infertility", which means there is a "extinction zone" between the two.
Researchers believe that the characteristic of a man in the gray zone is that when the coarse sperm count per milliliter of semen is 13.5 million and 48 million, 32% to 63% of the sperm are active, and 9% to 12% of the sperm have a uniform appearance, and the normal sperm shape should be ovoid.
Guzick said that when the number of sperm is lower than the gray area, it indicates infertility, and when the number of sperm is higher than this area, it indicates fertility. The experts reviewing this study have expressed different opinions on the above research findings.
Larry Lipsyultz said that when using it to try to understand what male infertility is and what male fertility is, especially for patients, "there is no complete and available information in the study. The sperm count provided by Guzick and his colleagues overlaps, making it difficult to distinguish between those with fertility and those without fertility.
Lamb said that the study may be "very useful" for doctors to preliminarily evaluate men. She believes that Guzick et al. have made fundamental improvements to the WHO standards used globally. But this standard was not formulated using precise scientific methods. However, Lamb and Lipshultz agree that the semen analysis used by Guzick and his colleagues is only a screening tool and is not a complete method for determining fertility. They think that this can not replace the whole process inspection of urology experts.
Lamb said, "Semen analysis is very important in evaluating male infertility and can provide some suggestions for existing problems. However, it cannot be used as a diagnosis of infertility.
Lipshultz said, "Sperm count is not very important. Higher precision experiments are necessary. He believes that higher precision analysis can evaluate the ability of sperm to fertilize eggs.
