Preoperative imaging prevented operations and storage of tissue with cancer. Evaluation of stored ovarian tissue for MRD using sensitive markers is essential to increase safety and to prevent reimplantation of tissue with malignant cells.

Injury to blood vessels and focal ovarian cortical fibrosis are aspects of ovarian damage caused by chemotherapy. These findings indicate a potential additional mechanism of damage to the direct apoptotic effect of chemotherapy on follicles. The possibility that these changes are involved in ageing ovaries should be further investigated.

NCT02659592.

In humans, only a small fraction (2-12%) of a sperm population can respond by chemoattraction to follicular factors. This recent finding led to the hypothesis that chemotaxis provides a mechanism for selective recruitment of functionally mature spermatozoa (i.e., of capacitated spermatozoa, which possess the potential to undergo the acrosome reaction and fertilize the egg). This study aimed to examine this possibility. Capacitated spermatozoa were identified by their ability to undergo the acrosome reaction upon stimulation with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate. Under capacitating conditions, only a small portion (2-14%) of the spermatozoa were found to be capacitated. The spermatozoa were then separated according to their chemotactic activity, which resulted in a subpopulation enriched with chemotactically responsive spermatozoa and a subpopulation depleted of such spermatozoa. The level of capacitated spermatozoa in the former was -13-fold higher than that in the latter. The capacitated state was temporary (50 min < life span < 240 min), and it was synchronous with the chemotactic activity. A continuous process of replacement of capacitated/chemotactic spermatozoa within a sperm population was observed.Spermatozoa that had stopped being capacitated did not become capacitated again, which indicates that the capacitated state is acquired only once in a sperm's lifetime. A total sperm population depleted of capacitated spermatozoa stopped being chemotactic. When capacitated spermatozoa reappeared, chemotactic activity was restored. These observations suggest that spermatozoa acquire their chemotactic responsiveness as part of the capacitation process and lose this responsiveness when the capacitated state is terminated. We suggest that the role of sperm chemotaxis in sperm-egg interaction in vivo may indeed be selective recruitment of capacitated spermatozoa for fertilizing the egg.Human spermatozoa are attracted to follicular factors in vitro, and the attraction is correlated with egg fertilizability (1). The attraction results from chemotaxis and is accompanied by speed enhancement (ref. 2; for reviews, see refs. 3 and 4). Unlike the case of species with external fertilization in which most, if not all, of the sperm population is chemotactically responsive (for reviews, see refs. 5 and 6), in humans only a small fraction of the sperm population (2-12%) is chemotactically responsive at any given time (7). The identity of the responsive spermatozoa in humans changes with time by turnover: chemotactic spermatozoa lose their activity while others acquire it (7). This raised the possibility that spermatozoa are selectively chemotactic only at a certain physiological stage. The capacitated stage-i.e., the stage at which spermatozoa possess the potential to undergo the acrosome reaction (a release of proteolytic enzymes enabling sperm penetration through the egg coat) and to fertilize the egg (for recent reviews, see refs. 8-13)-seemed a reasonable possibility (3, 7). This study investigates this possibility an...