Name :Dorene Chen

Department:Microbiology


Hello people,sorry for late blog posting, for this week I will talk about one special type of testing I had during my attachment :Seminal Analysis.


Clinical Significance:

Semen analysis is used to determine male fertility status or to determine the success of a vasectomy.


Semen is composed of spermatoza suspended in seminal fluid, which provides nutrition and volume to transfer the spermatoza to endocervical mucus.


Male in fertility can be affected by a number of causes eg:
1) Decrease in the number of viable sperm
2) Sperm with abnormal morphology
3)Abnormalities of seminal fluid


In determining successfulness of vasectomy, sperm count should decrease slowly from a time span of 6 weeks to 3 months for even longer.


Specimen must be fresh, perferably lesser than 2 hours as viability decreases as time increases. Sample is collected through masturbationm after a minimum of 3-7 days of sexual abstinence and kept into a clean, wide mouthed plastic container and kept at body temperature best.


Method:


Vital Stain (for viability)
1) mix one drop of semen with 2 drops of 1% Eosin Y
2) add 3 drops of 10% Nigrosin solution after 30 seconds and mix
3)place a drop of mixture into a glass slide to make a smear.
4) Viavle spermatoza will be unstained and non viable spermatopza will be stained.( spermatoza shape with purple background seen)
5) Percentage of viabililty can be accessed.


Motility test
1) fill KOVA slide chamber with 20 microlite of neat semen (undiluted, pure specimen)
2) examine under microscope for motility as well as percentage of active, sluggish, non-progressive and non-motile sperms


Sperm count, leucocytes and morphology of sperm

1) specimen is diluted with sodium bicarbonate-formalin solution in 1:20 ratio ( 50 microlite of semen with 950 microlite of solution)
2) fill KOVA slide chamber with 20 microlite of diluted semen suspension
3) examine under microscope for number of spermatoza and leucocytes.
4) access the percentage of normal spermatoza, and abnormal morphology eg: double headed, no head, 2 tails, no tail, wrong head- tail ratio (head too big) etc etc.



Lastly apearance, viscosity, liquefaction time (time taken for semen to be liquid-like), anstinence, time collected, volume of specimen, time received and pH (must be alkaline) should be reported in to seminal analysis as well.


























Counting Spermatoza: chose only 1 large grid.

Source : http://www.clt.astate.edu/wwilliam/cls_1531_seminal_fluid_lab_1_.htm




























undiluted Specimen
Source :http://www2.uni-jena.de/hautkl/elbandro.htm