Frozen sperm withstands microgravity
2 Jul 2019
Human sperm has been show to retain its viability within the gravitational conditions in space — which could aid our missions to colonise other planets.
A Barcelona-based study group made of engineers and obstetricians exposed 10 frozen sperm samples from healthy donors to microgravity.
Using sperm analysis measurements used for fertility testing – such as concentration, motility, vitality, morphology and DNA fragmentation – the study found samples were still just as active and concentrated as normal samples.
Dr Montserrat Boada of Dexeus Women’s Health in Barcelona said: “If the number of space missions increases in the coming years, and are of longer duration, it is important to study the effects of long-term human exposure to space in order to face them.
“It’s not unreasonable to start thinking about the possibility of reproduction beyond the Earth,” she said.
In the frozen samples, the study found a 100% concordance in DNA fragmentation rate and vitality and 90% concordance in sperm concentration and vitality.
Space radiation would impair the quality and viability of fresh human sperm more than frozen samples, according to Dr Boada, which are cryopreserved in special cryostraws and transported in cryotanks.
But these limited effects of gravitational differences on frozen human gametes – a state in which they could be transported from Earth – opens the possibility of creating a human sperm bank outside Earth.
The team at Dexeus Women’s Health worked with microgravity engineers from the Polytechnic University of Barcelona. For the experiment, the Aeroclub Barcelona-Sabadell of Spain provided a small aeroartic training aircraft that produces short-duration hypogravity.
The results were presented at the 35th Annual Meeting of ESHRE, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, in Vienna at the end of June.
