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An At-Home "Sample"

Testing for Sperm Concentration in the Privacy of Your Home

By Lyn Mettler

FertilMARQ tests the concentration portion of the semen analysis by comparing it to the standard of 20 million sperm/milliliter set by the World Health Organization.

The beauty of this test is that it allows men to conduct the "production" part of the test at home. "An at-home test is desirable since many men are extremely resistant to collecting semen specimens in a doctor's office or in some cases, even talking about their fertility in the doctor's office," says Dr. Randy Morris, a reproductive endocrinologist in Illinois.

Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School and director of Men's Health Boston, agrees. "Men hate, hate, hate going to the doctor," says Dr. Morgentaler, who also helped develop FertilMARQ.

*Rebecca Burns, 28, who has been trying to conceive for just more than a year, says asking her husband to go to a doctor's office and ejaculate would be like asking him to drink a bottle of poison. "My husband still wasn't thrilled at the prospect of ejaculating in a cup, but it was much better than the alternative and he agreed without too much fuss," she says. "I did all the reading on how to do the test, told him what he needed to do and let him go to work. It was really pretty simple."

The test does involve quite a number of steps which can sound pretty daunting, but if you read the instruction booklet that accompanies the test, it's actually quite easy. The process is as follows:

1. Wait three days after the man's last ejaculation before conducting the test – so lay off the baby-making for a few days before testing.
2. The male ejaculates into a cup provided with the test. Couples can even have intercourse with a specially-provided condom and then dump the semen collected in the condom into the cup.
3. The semen must sit in the cup no less than 15 minutes and no more than 12 hours to allow it to liquefy.
4. Semen is then drawn into a dropper and placed in a well in the test cassette (similar to a diabetes sugar test) along with drops of blue and clear solution provided.
5. After everything soaks in for one minute, you compare the color of the test well to a pre-colored blue circle.
6. Repeat the entire test – to compare two results – at least three days, but not seven days after the first test.

Want to see more?

• Male Factor Infertility
• Achieving Pregnancy: Ten Tips for Men
• Eight Ways to Help Improve Male Fertility
• Talk about it!