New app ‘reveals how strong your sperm is’ – telling you how fertile you are WITHOUT an awkward trip to the doctors
The app uses a smartphone’s camera to zoom in on a semen sample and record a 1-second video
A NEW smartphone app and attachment allows men to test their fertility at home.
The gadget takes just five seconds to analyse sperm concentration, movement, and count.
The developers likened it to taking a home pregnancy test.
Around 3.5million people in the UK struggle to conceive naturally.
And this invention can tell couples if the bloke may be to blame.
It can also check if a vasectomy has worked, by sufficiently reducing sperm count.
Men currently have to visit a clinic to provide a sample, which some find embarrassing.
These are analysed using expensive machines and can take a long time for results to be returned.
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But the new device allows men to produce and test their sample at home.
Results are known immediately, and can be stored on the phone for long-term tracking.
The materials needed to make the device cost just £3.57.
A laboratory test conducted by a expert costs almost 30-times more at £100.
Results are 98 per cent accurate, compared with the clinic-based analysis.
The device was created at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, United States.
It uses a smartphone’s camera to zoom in on a semen sample and record a 1-second video.
The app then analyses the quantity and quality of the sperm, including how well they move.
The result is graded against World Health Organisation standards.
Dr Hadi Shafiee, who worked on the device, said: “We wanted to come up with a solution to make male infertility testing as simple and affordable as home pregnancy tests.
“Men have to provide semen samples in these rooms at a hospital, a situation in which they often experience stress, embarrassment, pessimism and disappointment.
“Current clinical tests are lab-based, time-consuming and subjective.
“This test is low-cost, quantitative, highly accurate and can analyse a video of an undiluted, unwashed semen sample in less than five seconds.”
Allan Pacey, Professor of Andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: “The use of a smartphone and its camera to examine a sample of semen is very innovative.
“The data shown suggests that this approach could be as accurate as the more expensive tests carried out in a specialist laboratory.
“Clearly, this technology will need to be evaluated by other people, and in other locations, but I am impressed by its potential.”
He added: “It is important to note that this approach does not replicate all of the tests carried out in a specialist laboratory.
“For example, the smartphone device does not examine sperm size and shape, known as morphology.
“In reality, I think this would not be a problem for the majority of men as even the experts can’t always agree on the significance of poor sperm morphology or how to measure it reliably.
“However, for a small number of men whose sperm are badly made it would be important to get this diagnosed correctly.
“So any man who struggles with infertility for a significant length of time – say more than a year – should consider getting their test repeated in a specialist laboratory, regardless of what the phone app might have concluded.”
The device is detailed in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
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