Hope for infertile men

A sperm separating machine might prove to be a boon for men suffering from infertility.

A sperm separating machine might prove to be a boon for men suffering from infertility as it filters out sperm that have a type of DNA damage associated with infertility and a heightened risk of childhood cancers in offspring.

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The new sperm sorter, developed in Australia by John Aitken and Chris Ainsworth at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, alongside commercial partner Life Therapeutics of Sydney, should be particularly useful when a would-be father is older, or is a heavy smoker or has been exposed to pollution in the workplace, all factors that increase this type of DNA damage.

According to a report in the New Scientist, when attempting IVF with sperm from men with fertility problems, clinics usually centrifuge the semen to increase the concentration of the densest sperm cells, which tend to be the healthier ones.

But the centrifuge alone takes at least 45 minutes to sort sperm, which is a long time when processing hundreds of samples in a busy clinic, and neither technique can spot sperm that are free of DNA damage.

The sorter is based on the principle that sperm with the most negatively charged membranes have the least DNA damage and the tests suggest that the sorter is equally efficient at pulling sperm with less DNA damage from the semen of men with fertility problems.

The sperm that were selected by the sorter also looked healthier, with the same physical characteristics sought by technicians making a visual selection.

"It is so simple. I've never seen anything like it before. You turn it on, the sperm move across and there you go. Only time will tell, but it might take some of the subjective nature out of picking good sperm," says Moira O'Bryan of the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development in Melbourne.