Semen characteristics of 49 fertile males

We examined the semen characteristics of 49 men whose partners had conceived within the last 16 weeks. There was considerable variation in the semen results. The % of morphologically ideal forms and the absence of sperm bound antibodies appeared to be the two most important semen characteristics when assessing the fertilising potential of the samples. A large proportion of samples (70%) when compared to the WHO standards of normality, were classed abnormal, however, only 25% of the samples had greater than 2 abnormal characteristics. It is diagnostically more relevant to determine the number of abnormalities within a sample rather than categorising the sample as "normal" or "abnormal".