We want to finalize the year giving some small reflections regarding infertility and showing three videos, made by SCA users from different continents in order to reassure the patients with the male infertility analysis. You will see that SCA is able to unify processes in semen analysis whatever the country and its [...]
Sperm functionality: Importance in assessing sperm quality, fertilization success and live birth outcome The WHO5 manual (2010) for semen analysis in 2010 sparked a great deal of debate. Perhaps the most important aspects emerging from the debate was that specific “single value” cut-off points are not useful to distinguish between “good and [...]
Major new role players in the clinical setting using CASA technology for sperm quality assessment in Africa In most of Southern Africa and in Scandinavia there has long been a history of resistance to the use of Computer Aided Sperm Analysis (CASA) in the clinical/IVF laboratory setting. This is partly understandable since [...]
Marriage of WHO5 and sperm functionality review and debate Since the appearance of the semen analysis manual of the World Health Organization in 2010 (WHO5), there has been many critical debates about its value and use. In a recent review by Van der Horst and Du Plessis (2017) most of these aspects [...]
Three SCA upgrades and training to Germplasm, Conservation and Reproductive Biotechnologies (GCRB) Laboratory, Agricultural Research Council (ARC), Irene, Pretoria Figure 1: The ARC-GCRB personnel. The ARC-GCRB laboratories based in Pretoria-Irene, is well known for its reproductive biology research on indigenous South African domestic animals. There are dozens of unique indigenous [...]
Helping families grow and preserving species in danger of extinction Whenever friends ask me what I do for a living and I answer: “analyze sperm”, their first reaction is amusing. Some of them just smirk a little bit while others laugh loudly. However, when I go into detail about what we do [...]
Visit by Microptic Biologist to collaborator laboratory in Cape Town, South Africa for training and discussions Prof van der Horst and Dr Medarde in front of new Comparative Spermatology Laboratory during opening ceremony. Microptic SL in Barcelona expanded its staff and activities greatly in the last year and appointed a [...]
Personal lubricants; for or against conception? Personal lubricants are occasionally demanded during intercourse or semen collection in clinical settings. This could be posing a problem for couples looking to conceive, as several lubricants have been reported to decrease sperm functional parameters, especially sperm motility as the most important marker of a successful [...]
The importance of insect sperm: The black soldier fly The biodiversity and general importance of insects are not generally appreciated. Very few people realize that insects represent about 95% of the Animal Kingdom (AK). In other words all other animal species such as invertebrates including sponges, oysters, mussels, sea urchins, segmented worms, [...]
Sperm of the endangered African penguin and Rockhopper penguin studied The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) (Fig. 1) is endemic to southern Africa and is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List. It is also known as the black-footed or jackass penguin because its bray sounds like that of the donkey. There [...]
