Seminal protein levels assessed with dipstick test correlate with sperm recovery after cryopreservation

Abstract

The process of freezing/thawing causes structural and functional damage to sperm samples, which can be mitigated by seminal plasma proteins. This study investigated the proposition that seminal protein measurements using a urinary dipstick prior to freezing could help predict the post-thaw recovery of live spermatozoa. This was a prospective study including 149 men undergoing semen analysis due to male and/or female infertility. The seminal samples were analysed according to World Health Organisation standards and protein concentrations were measured using a commercially available urinary dipstick following quantitative validation. The median live sperm recovery rates were 79%, 81% and 94%, respectively, in samples with protein concentrations of ≤1.0 g/L (+/++), 3.0 g/L (+++) and ≥20.0 g/L (++++) measured in fresh specimen dipstick analysis (p < 0.05) indicating that the probability of recovering at least 50% of frozen spermatozoa increased progressively with higher protein concentrations in the fresh sample (chi-square for linear association = 7.17. p = 0.007). In conclusion, fresh seminal protein concentration levels assessed with a dipstick test correlate with the proportion of live spermatozoa recovered from cryopreserved samples. This simple, low-cost test may add prognostic information to baseline semen analysis prior to sperm banking.