Effect of personal lubricants

The Effect of “Personal Lubricants” on Sperm Quality

Personal lubricants’ effect on sperm motility: Four students from the University of Aalborg used the SCA CASA system to conduct a study accessing the topic of personal lubricants’ effect on male fertility.

Many couples use personal lubricants to enhance pleasure during intercourse, but not many of them would consider whether the personal lubricants could decrease their opportunity to have a child. Some lubricants are even marked as “sperm friendly”, but some studies suggest that this may not be the case. In this study, three kinds of personal lubricants where analysed; Oil-based, silicone-based and water-based lubricants. Some studies had already suggested that the glycerine in the water-based lubricant might interfere with the membrane of the sperm flagella, but what about the two other kinds of personal lubricants?  Each sperm sample was divided equally between four test tubes containing 20% of the mentioned lubricants diluted in Nidacon PureSperm Wash, and Nidacon PureSperm Wash alone (as control). Motility parameters were determined using the sperm class analyzer  (SCA, ver 6.3, Microptic, Barcelona, Spain) computer aided semen analysis system at three time points over a period of 2 hours.

Fig. I. Motion and velocity parameters as defined by the 5th edition of the WHO laboratory manual for the Examination and processing of human semen, and assesssed by the SCA.

The results demonstrated that the water-based lubricant, gave a significantly lower percentage of progressively motile, and a significantly higher percentage of immotile spermatozoa compared to the silicone-based lubricant. The percentage of total motile sperm was lower in the water- and oil-based groups than in the silicone-based group at different times.

The velocity of the spermatozoa also showed a decline when exposed to the water-based, and oil-based lubricant compared with the control and silicone group.

Nikolaj Birk Larsen, Ida Dsane Andersen, Peter Krupsdah Elling and Jonas Frederiksen – students at Aalborg University – Medicine with Industrial Specialisation

Hiva Alipour and Fereshteh Dardmeh – Postdocoral Fellows, Department of Health Science and Technology.

See the poster presented at last ISIVF 2019 in Barcelona.