Efficiency of sperm separation by using microfluidic chips compared to the swim up method

Abstract The effectiveness of assisted reproduction methods is still not as high as was expected recently. For effective therapy, it is necessary to use only the highest quality sperm for oocyte fertilization, as the fertilization process most often takes place using the ICSI technique, i.e. direct injection of sperm into the oocyte. For these reasons, separation techniques are constantly being developed, and in a relatively short period of time the view of these procedures has changed. In recent years, microfluidic chip techniques have been increasingly applied. In this study, we compared the swim up technique with the two most used chips (ca0 and ZYMOT). We tested the efficiency of these separation methods against the swim-up method. In this study, we evaluated sperm concentration, motility, morphology, acrosome status and DNA integrity before and after separation methods. Each patient’s ejaculate was separated simultaneously by the swim up method and both chips. It turned out that the separation methods are very similar in motility, concentration and acrosome status and sperm morphology. However, in the case of DNA fragmentation, a significant difference in the reduction of the proportion of fragmented spermatozoa was found only with the chips and not with the swim-up method. Moreover, when comparing the relative effectiveness of sperm reduction with fragmented DNA, the ZYMOT method was more effective than Ca0. However, the differences between the chips were not statistically significant with an average of 18%.