Deep-freeze preservation of normal and pathologic human semen.

Abstract

The past two decades have seen a great increase of interest in heterologous, and to some extent also homologous human insemination. As a result, freeze preservation of human semen has attracted more attention and a number of technical reports on the subject have been published.The literature contains no large series of experiments comparing freeze preservation of normal and pathologic human semen under otherwise identical conditions. The present report concerns 472 analyses: 235 normal and 237 pathologic specimens of human semen were frozen under standardized conditions but using varying technique.Rapid freezing gave better results than did gradual freezing. The protective action of glycerol, which has been documented in earlier studies, was not enhanced by addition of egg yolk and was only moderately increased by addition of human serum albumin.Survival of spermatozoa, as judged by eosin staining technique was—as expected—poorer in pathologic than in normal semen. Freeze preservation of pathologic semen from oligospermic men for subsequent insemination of a spouse seems therefore to be scarcely feasible with currently available freeze techniques.