Does anyone know anything about sperm morphology

[winkle2]

My husbands has come back at 1%. Docs said this won't affect fertility but I want to know what it means.

Sperm morphology is the physical appearance of the sperm, ie the number that are not deformed/damaged etc.

This might help you, I've lifted it from a fertility Dr's blog (in the US)

This week I saw a couple who were told the reason they were not getting pregnant was ?bad morphology?. The sperm, they were told, could not penetrate the egg because of the abnormal shape of the sperm. Because of this, they would need to go directly to in vitro fertilization with ICSI. This was in spite of the fact that they were young, had normal hormone levels and open tubes. I?ll tell you what I told them.
When we test sperm (the semen analysis) we look at a few different parameters. First is the volume, which should be 2cc or higher. Second is the count. This is the number of sperm per cc, so it?s technically a measure of the sperm concentration. This should be 20 million per cc or higher. The average is around 35 million. Next is the motility: the percentage of sperm moving. Should be 50%, most normal samples are not much higher. And then there is the morphology: the percentage of sperm normally shaped. This should be 14% or higher. The average is 2-6%, but why?
The original guidelines for sperm parameters, from the WHO, stated normal morphology should be 30%. Then about 20 years ago, Dr. Kruger came out and said we really need to be looking more carefully at sperm shapes. If we are really careful we will see that there are more abnormal sperm than we think, and the cutoff should be 14%. He called his classification "strict criteria". He also said that by being more careful we could better identify the men who are infertile due to badly shaped sperm. This all sounded well so the andrologists (the people who do your sperm test) started looking harder, and harder, and harder. They now deduct for every sperm that does not look perfect. So over the past 20 years, the andrologists have been getting pickier and pickier, and now a man is lucky if his morphology is over 5%, and almost everyone is less than 14%.
Obviously this has all gone too far. We are telling almost all men that their sperm is abnormal, and that just can?t be. The fact is we do not know what a normal sperm looks like. More on this next time.

Hm ok so 1% is low I reckon?

winkle

I can normally find the answers on Google but I must be honest, I can't.
Your doctors said it won't be a problem but I would go there and ask them to explain it. I would honestly go and ask them to explain in BABY STEPS what it means

1% might not sound much, but 1% of, say, 50,000,000 sperms is still a lot!

It only takes 1, and all that jazz.

Ask your Dr/clinic to explain things in full to you.

I have asked hubby to ring them and find out exactly what it means and he got the hump with me saying this baby thing is taking over our whole lives! So I'm backing off for today - as I think he's relieved that the docs said its normal - and I'll try again in a few days.

Ha ha ha yeh.

Let him revel in his relief :)

winkle my DH's came back at less than 3% with reduced motility but we got DD so number might be low but it's not a deal breaker.

I think because everything else is normal the 1% isn't a worry. But I will still be trying to find ways to improve it!

Hi winkle. My dh has had 3%, 4%, 3%. Like you other factors are good/normal. We saw a fertility consultant who said that this is borderline. Our GP didn't know if high count balances it out.

You need to get a repeat test first off, as these seem to be able to fluctuate a lot. Ideally after three months to get a whole new batch.

I'd seen the website Frankel points to, it seems to me there's not a huge amount of knowledge or agreement as to how morphology affects conception, it's very frustrating.

With regards to improving, most of the vitamins and advice ( re baths, pants etc) seem focused around improving count. To be honest nothing changed in our sample but we tried high dose vit c, omega 3, as well as the conception bits he'd been on for ages.

He is about to start acupuncture.

Have you had tests? I think if this is your only prob and you have time then it may just take a while longer with poor morphology.

X

The other thing is that some study somewhere - can't remember where I read it - suggests that there is evidence that these tests do produce a different, poorer quality of ejaculate (hate that word, don't know why!) than your run-of-the-mill shag so the real thing is likely to be better anyway.

Hi. I know lots about morphology having obsessed over it for over a year! Firstly, you need another sample as they can vary hugely, especially if there was an illness in the past few months. For my dh, conception wellman, vit c and pine bark did make a huge difference in terms of both morphology and motility in just two months. My cons isn't too worried about morphology, especially if the other parameters are ok. There is a man on a website called fertilichat called Rich where I gleaned a lot of info. He reckons you need 16 million good sperm for conception chances to be good. I have no idea how true this is (and presumably actually you only need one ninja sperm really) but we could work out from the total counts how many good ones there are. After 17 cycles I'm still not pregnant (sigh) but probs my side too and no one seems bothered about the sperm (which was 3% morph and last test was 7%).

Good luck and do report back. Morphology pops up a lot on these boards. Interestingly my gp says he rarely sees morphology better than 15.

Thanks rabbit.

That's really useful.

The docs said pretty much the same thing to my husband ? that everything else is good so the 1% shouldn't affect fertility.

My husband eats well (ish!), hjas been taking Wellman for months and isn?t overweight and he exercises regularly.

However, he's a big drinker and when he drinks he smokes so maybe these are affecting the morphology?