IVF Mail - morphology

morphology

By: maryam,
18 February 2008


Question:
	does it need to stain spematozoa in order to find morphology?

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alok teotia said on 08 April 2008

"Not necessarily, if u have a microscope with good contrast enhancing technology (like the one used for ICSI - hoffman modulation contrast optics). it clearly shaws most of the details needed for morphologic evaluation."

Michael L. Reed said on 19 February 2008

"Regarding staining of sperm for morphology, there are certainly details of live sperm that can be seen with conventional microscopy that do not require stains. Fixed, nonstained sperm can be visualized to some degree with phase or brightfield microscopy, and by DIC, however the fixation process iteself will change the shape of the sperm to some extent. And there are excellent papers by Dr. Bartoov regarding high magnification analysis of living sperm for selection for ICSI.

Staining gives you access to fine details on larger numbers of cells (manual or computer analysis) without requiring complex imaging systems. In addition, the cells can be archived, while living sperm obviously cannot be archived. There are a number of stains available commercially that yield high repeatability between specimens, and are easy to use so that you can achieve good repeatability between technicians.

From a regulatory standpoint, there are also larger peer groups available for comparison of data when using stained preparations.

But the important question: what is your clinical need or application? In other words, how would you use the sperm morphology data? If you look at the proficiency testing data from the American Association of Bioanalysts you will find multiple categories for interpretation, and within each category multiple stain types. If you desire to use the "strict" criteria method, the choice of staining method is very important. For any method to be meaningful, at the least you will need to look at your data against your own patient population - but it is very helpful to use a method where data is avaialable and comparable either by proficiency testing or by comparison of your correlates to puplications by others.

A good starting point would be to attend a seminar on sperm morphology, or to obtain either a more recent WHO manual, or the 2002 ESHRE manual (which I believe used to be avialable from the Human Reproduction free article website).

Mike"