A Comparative Study of Swim-up and Upstream Methods for Isolating Sperm Cell for Intra Uterine Insemination

Sperm cell preparation is an important step in the advanced treatment of infertility. Among the different methods introduced, none are considered to be ideal. The common methods are based on utilizing centrifugal separation which has been proven to be harmful to the sperm cell. We developed a method, based on the motion against the flow of sperm cell, which can successfully separate active sperm cells. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of this approach with a randomized clinical trial. Fifty-one candidates for the intra uterine insemination (IUI) treatment participated in our study. Twenty-five cases were assigned to our test group, separating the sperm cells using the proposed method (upstream method), and the conventional swim-up method was applied to 26 cases in our control group. The entire process of IUI treatment in both groups was exactly the same except for the methods of separating sperm cells. Results showed that the pregnancy rate using the new method was 20%, while the common method of sperm cell preparation resulted in 15.3% pregnancy rate. The new sperm preparation method (Upstream method) can be used as a simple, quick and effective method of sperm cell separation in fertility treatment especially in IUI procedure.