Although the World Health Organization has established recommendations for sperm testing, there may still be substantial variation in a person’s results if compared to tests conducted at various times or in other labs. There is a lot of variation in the measurements of sperm parameters, which can lead to large discrepancies in the results of different studies. Although several studies have found individual variation in semen parameters, examination of this variation in infertile individuals has been neglected. The purpose of this research was to compare semen parameters between men of reproductive age with normozoospermia and those with oligozoospermia in terms of their inter- and intra-individual variability.
Over the course of nearly more than equal 2 years, 513 participants sent in at least 2 semen samples each via mail-in kits, for a total of 798 samples. Samples of sperm are collected and analyzed in a CLIA-accredited laboratory once a customer orders a Give Legacy at-home mail-in sperm collection kit. Normozoospermic men had less within-subject variation in all semen parameters than oligozoospermic men. Additionally, within-subject variation was consistently smaller than between-subject variation in men with normozoospermia. There was no correlation between age, period of abstinence, or body mass index and any of the semen parameters. This includes sperm concentration, sperm count, motile sperm count, total motility, progressive motility, and the proportion of sperm with normal morphology.
This observational study’s findings corroborate the widely varying values found for semen parameters in men with normozoospermia and oligozoospermia when using at-home semen collection kit samples. This highlights the significance of collecting many samples for analysis to offer a reliable evaluation of male fertility.
Source: bmcurol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12894-022-01134-0
