Objective evaluation of the morphology of human epididymal sperm heads

Abstract

Spermatozoa were obtained from nine epididymal regions of six epididymides taken from five men undergoing castration for prostatic carcinoma (53-76 years) and from one man with testicular cancer (38 years). Spermatozoa were obtained by mincing tissue in phosphate-buffered saline, making air dried smears and staining with Hemacolor. The percentage of sperm heads categorised subjectively as normal (of uniform shape) or otherwise was calculated for each region. This confirmed that grossly swollen sperm heads (previously shown to be artefacts) were only present in proximal regions of the duct. A computer-aided sperm morphology analyser (Sperm Class Analyzer(R)) was used to provide objective measurements of sperm head area, perimeter, length and width of the uniform sperm heads and revealed that there was a gradual and statistically significant decline in sperm head size upon maturation, as occurs in other species. There was no significant difference between the morphometric parameters of spermatozoa obtained from the distal cauda epididymis and those obtained from the ejaculates of young normozoospermic patients.

Dimensions of human ejaculated spermatozoa in Papanicolaou-stained seminal and swim-up smears obtained from the Integrated Semen Analysis System (ISAS®)

“…That there was no difference in head length between treatments may indicate that the changes observed reflect the well-known lateral 'explosion' artefacts caused by the smearing procedure [14,15] on spermatozoa that would have already been subjected to osmotic stress during liquefaction and in the swim-up medium. In future, better-designed experiments on matched samples should be performed by the use of stains that are equally good for technicians and computerized assessment.…”

“…Our technicians' impression has been that semen samples from diffe rent men contain spermatozoa of different size. This could reflect the stresses affecting spermatozoa during smearing and air drying of the semen sample that are known to produce swelling of immature sperm heads [14,15], apparent loss of cytoplasmic droplets [16] and cell shrinkage [17]. The response of the cells to these stresses may be characteristic of each man, and spermatozoa with expanded postacrosomal regions are indeed detected in human semen [28]; if these are less mature spermatozoa, detecting them would be of value in diagnosing epididymal dysfunction.…”

“…This could reflect the stresses affecting spermatozoa during smearing and air drying of the semen sample that are known to produce swelling of immature sperm heads [14,15], loss of cytoplasmic droplets [16] and cell shrinkage [11,17]. If men do have spermatozoa of different size, the detection of large sperm heads may be indicative of the presence of less mature spermatozoa that may have a lower fertilizing potential.…”

CASA derived human sperm abnormalities: correlation with chromatin packing and DNA fragmentation

“…Further, remodeling of sperm shaping takes place during the epididymal passage to produce a homogenous population of spermatozoa with all necessary specific morphological and functional features of sperm for attaining maximum probability of fertilization of an oocyte [19,20]. However, the process of spermatogenesis is not an efficient one, with a large number of abnormal forms being produced [21].…”

Effect of sample size and staining methods on stallion sperm morphometry by the Sperm Class Analyzer

“…Among the methods tested for stallions, Trypan blue and Giemsa (Kusunoki et al, 1988), Papanicolau (Hafez, 1987) and Spermac (Oettle, 1986) are not suitable for ASMA systems as they result in poorly stained cells, which do not permit digitisation (Gravance et al, 1995). The staining methods compared in this study (DQ, HC, HH) were chosen based on the positive results obtained in humans and in several animal species for different ASMA systems (Lacquet et al, 1996;Gago et al, 1998;Soler et al, 2000).…”