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An At-Home "Sample"
Testing for Sperm Concentration in the Privacy of Your Home
By Lyn Mettler
You've been trying to get pregnant for many months now, and you're starting to wonder if something is wrong. But your doctor, not to mention all the books you've read, says that you should wait a year before starting infertility treatment. Gathering some information, however, would help you
feel better about what's going on. So what can you do? One of the first things many doctors recommend is to have the man tested to determine the quality of his sperm, as testing men is a much easier task than evaluating the female. But testing the male means producing that all-important "sample" in the doctor's office, a process that makes many men cringe.
Home sperm testing with products like FertilMARQ, produced by Lake Consumer Products, allows men to test their sperm concentration in the privacy of their own home.
According to Dr. Juan Alvarez, director of the Institute of Male Infertility at Unidad de La Mujer in La Coruna, Spain, and also the developer of FertilMARQ, 40 percent of infertility problems can be attributed to the male. There are many reasons for male infertility including anti-sperm antibodies, hypogonadism, infections, lifestyle factors, varicoceles, poor sperm quality and more. And according to Lake Consumer Products, poor sperm quality is responsible for 40 percent of male infertility.
To test for poor sperm quality, doctors usually ask the man to produce a semen sample in the office, which is then taken to a lab and analyzed for the following:
- Count: Total number of sperm found in semen.
- Concentration: Total number of sperm cells per milliliter of semen.
- Morphology: The size and shape of the sperm.
- Motility: The ability of the sperm to move or swim through cervical mucus to the fallopian tubes.
- Velocity: The number of sperm that are the fastest swimmers and most likely to fertilize the egg.
- Viability: The number of sperm still alive when the sample is analyzed.
