Smartphone App Helps Diagnose Male Infertility
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An easy-to-use smartphone-based app could help diagnose male fertility at home, according to a study published today in Science Translational Medicine. Infertility affects roughly 45 million couples worldwide, and male infertility contributes to more than 40% of those cases. However, men can be uncomfortable with seeking fertility testing in the clinical setting, explained Hadi Shafiee, PhD, the senior author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Moreover, clinical testing of semen samples can be expensive, time-consuming, and subjective. These barriers, as well as cultural or social stigma associated with infertility, may prevent many men, especially those in resource-poor settings, from undergoing testing at all.
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@deepankar-r The researchers tested the device on 350 semen specimens from a fertility clinic and compared the results to those of traditional laboratory-based semen testing. They found that according to World Health Organization guidelines for assessing semen quality, the device was about 98% accurate. They also showed that the device performed well with both trained and untrained users.