New Point-of-Care Test For Male Fertility Potential

More than 70 million couples worldwide are affected by infertility, with male-factor infertility accounting for about half of the cases. Semen analysis is critical for determining male fertility potential, but conventional testing is costly and complex. Here, we demonstrate a paper-based microfluidic approach to quantify male fertility potential, simultaneously measuring 3 critical semen parameters in 10 min: live and motile sperm concentrations and sperm motility.

Detection limits of 8.46 and 15.18 million/mL were achieved for live and motile sperm concentrations, respectively. The live and motile sperm concentrations and motility values from our device correlated with those of the standard clinical approaches (R2 ≥ 0.84). In all cases, device provided 100% agreement in terms of clinical outcome. The device was also robust and could tolerate conditions of high absolute humidity (22.8 g/m3) up to 16 weeks when packaged with desiccant.

New device outperforms existing commercial paper-based assays by quantitatively measuring live and motile sperm concentrations and motility, in only 10 min. This approach is applicable to current clinical practices as well as self-diagnostic applications.

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Paper-Based Quantification of Male Fertility Potential

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Source: Clinical Chemistry



Source: Clinical Chemistry & Sinton Lab