Contraceptive efficacy: Determining the threshold for effective suppression based on sperm concentration, motility, and morphology.

Introdction: Human spermatogenesis is a complex process that transforms spermatogonial stem cells through mitosis and meiosis to spermatozoa. Testosterone is the key regulator of the terminal stages of meiosis, adherence of spermatids to Sertoli cells, and spermiation. Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) may be required for early spermatogenesis and is important for maintaining normal spermatogenesis in men.

Current global status of male reproductive health.

Background: The widespread interest in male reproductive health (MRH), fueled by emerging evidence, such as the global decline in sperm counts, has intensified concerns about the status of MRH. Consequently, there is a pressing requirement for a strategic, systematic approach to identifying critical questions, collecting pertinent information, and utilizing these data to develop evidence-based strategies. The methods for addressing these questions and the pathways toward their answers will inevitably vary based on the variations in cultural, geopolitical, and health-related contexts.

Sperm Toolbox-A selection of small molecules to study human spermatozoa.

Male contraceptive options and infertility treatments are limited, and almost all innovation has been limited to updates to medically assisted reproduction protocols and methods. To accelerate the development of drugs that can either improve or inhibit fertility, we established a small molecule library as a toolbox for assay development and screening campaigns using human spermatozoa. We have profiled all compounds in the Sperm Toolbox in several automated high-throughput assays that measure stimulation or inhibition of sperm motility or the acrosome reaction.

Practice and development of male contraception: European Academy of Andrology and American Society of Andrology guidelines.

Backgrounds: Despite a wide spectrum of contraceptive methods for women, the unintended pregnancy rate remains high (45% in the US), with 50% resulting in abortion. Currently, 20% of global contraceptive use is male-directed, with a wide variation among countries due to limited availability and lack of efficacy. Worldwide studies indicate that >50% of men would opt to use a reversible method, and 90% of women would rely on their partner to use a contraceptive.

From worst-case to reality - Case studies illustrating tiered refinement of consumer exposure to cosmetic ingredients.

Consumer exposure to cosmetic ingredients is estimated in a tiered manner. Simple Tier1 deterministic aggregate exposure modelling generates a worst case estimate of exposure. Tier1 assumes that a consumer uses all cosmetic products concomitantly daily, at maximum frequency, and products always contain the ingredient at the maximum allowed % w/w concentration.

Working and working out: Decision-making inputs connect daily work demands to physical exercise.

Work demands can undermine engagement in physical exercise, posing a threat to employee health and well-being. Integrating resource theories and a novel decision-making theory called the decision triangle, we propose that this effect may emerge because work stress changes the energetic and emotional processes people engage in when making decisions about exercise after work. Using diary-style data across two workweeks (N = 83 workers, 783 days), we used multilevel latent profile analysis to extract common decision input profiles, or daily configurations of energy and affect as key decision-making resources.

Male contraceptive development: A medicinal chemistry perspective.

There is a need for non-hormonal contraceptives. One area that needs further investigation is the development of male contraceptives. Comparatively little is understood about potential drug targets in men to achieve a reversible contraceptive effect.

Male Attitudes towards Infertility: Results from a Global Questionnaire.

Purpose: In general, men are less likely to seek health care than women. Infertility is a global disease that afflicts approximately 15% of reproductive age couples and the male contributes to 40% of the diagnosable cause. Remarkably, no large or multi-national population data exist regarding men's perceptions about their infertility.

Do studies published in two leading reproduction journals between 2011 and 2020 demonstrate that they followed WHO5 recommendations for basic semen analysis?

Study Question: Do publications that involve the interpretation of the results of a basic semen analysis, published in Human Reproduction and Fertility & Sterility between 2011 and 2020, give sufficient evidence in their methodology to demonstrate that they followed the technical methods recommended in the fifth edition of the World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory manual, entitled WHO Laboratory Manual for the Examination and Processing of Human Semen (WHO5)?

Summary Answer: Evidence of methodological agreement of studies with the WHO5 recommendations was low, despite 70% of papers stating that they followed WHO5 recommendations.

What Is Known Already: A basic semen analysis is currently an integral part of infertility investigations of the male, but method standardization in laboratories remains an issue. The different editions of the WHO manual for the basic semen analysis (WHO1-6) have attempted to address this by providing increasingly rigorous methodological protocols to reduce experimental error.

WHO 2021 and 2030 reference values for semen assessment: three challenges for andrology in the journey ahead.

Whilst formulating the World Health Organization reference values for semen assessment for 2021, three key challenges were identified, namely the quality of semen assessments, the transparency and reporting of data and, lastly, the paucity of studies with primary data. There is an urgent need to address these issues and we present suggested solutions that will have a real-world influence on the next iteration of the reference values for semen assessments and andrology in general.

"Your help isn't helping me!" Unhelpful workplace social support, strain, and the role of individual differences.

While the reception of social support at work is generally considered a net positive for employees, researchers have identified that particular kinds of social support, such as unhelpful workplace social support (UWSS), tend to evoke stress and contribute to strain for recipients. Although (Gray et al. , (4), 359-385, 2020), when validating the novel UWSS measure, uncovered relations between UWSS and various outcomes, more research is needed to further understand the impacts of UWSS.

Research funding for male reproductive health and infertility in the UK and USA [2016 - 2019].

There is a paucity of data on research funding levels for male reproductive health (MRH). We investigated the research funding for MRH and infertility by examining publicly accessible web-databases from the UK and USA government funding agencies. Information on the funding was collected from the UKRI-GTR, the NIHR's Open Data Summary, and the USA's NIH RePORT web-databases.

Behavioural switching during oscillations of intracellular Ca concentration in free-swimming human sperm.

A human sperm must swim to the egg to fertilise it. To do this the sperm uses different types of swimming (behaviours) as they are needed. When we watch sperm swimming we see that they regularly change behaviour, sometimes repeatedly switching between two different types.