Automated smartphone-based system for measuring sperm viability, DNA fragmentation, and hyaluronic binding assay score.

The fundamental test for male infertility, semen analysis, is mostly a manually performed subjective and time-consuming process and the use of automated systems has been cost prohibitive. We have previously developed an inexpensive smartphone-based system for at-home male infertility screening through automatic and rapid measurement of sperm concentration and motility. Here, we assessed the feasibility of using a similar smartphone-based system for laboratory use in measuring: a) Hyaluronan Binding Assay (HBA) score, a quantitative score describing the sperm maturity and fertilization potential in a semen sample, b) sperm viability, which assesses sperm membrane integrity, and c) sperm DNA fragmentation that assesses the degree of DNA damage. There was good correlation between the manual analysis and smartphone-based analysis for the HBA score when the device was tested with 31 fresh, unprocessed human semen samples. The smartphone-based approach performed with an accuracy of 87% in sperm classification when the HBA score was set at manufacturer's threshold of 80. Similarly, the sperm viability and DNA fragmentation tests were also shown to be compatible with the smartphone-based system when tested with 102 and 47 human semen samples, respectively

A Comparative Analysis of Health-Related Quality of Life 1 Year Following Myomectomy or Uterine Artery Embolization: Findings from the COMPARE-UF Registry

Objective: To compare 12-month post-treatment health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) and symptom severity (SS) changes among patients with symptomatic uterine fibroids (SUF) not seeking fertility and undergo a hysterectomy, abdominal myomectomy (AM), or uterine artery embolization (UAE). Materials and Methods: The Comparing Options for Management: Patient-Centered Results for Uterine Fibroids (COMPARE-UF) Registry is a multi-institutional prospective observational cohort study of patients treated for SUF. A subset of 1465 women 31-45 years of age, who underwent either hysterectomy (n = 741), AM (n = 446), or UAE (n = 155) were included in this analysis. Demographics, fibroid history, and symptoms were obtained by baseline questionnaires and at 1 year post-treatment. Results were stratified by all treatments and propensity score weighting to adjust for differences in baseline characteristics. Results: Women undergoing UAE reported the lowest baseline HR-QoL and highest SS scores (mean = 40.6 [standard deviation (SD) = 23.8]; 62.3 [SD = 24.2]) followed by hysterectomy (44.3 [24.3]; 59.8 [SD = 24.1]). At 12 months, women who underwent a hysterectomy experienced the largest change in both HR-QoL (48.7 [26.2]) and SS (51.9 [25.6]) followed by other uterine-sparing treatments. Propensity score weighting revealed all treatments produced substantial improvement, with hysterectomy patients reporting the highest HR-QoL score (92.0 [17.8]) compared with myomectomy (86.7 [17.2]) and UAE (82.6 [21.5]) (p \u3c 0.0001). Similarly, hysterectomy patients reported the lowest SS scores (8.2 [15.1]) compared with myomectomy (16.5 [15.1]) and UAE (19.6 [17.5]) (p \u3c 0.0001). Conclusion: All procedures showed improvement in HR-QoL and reduction in SS score at 12 months, hysterectomy showing maximum improvement. Of importance, at 12 months, patients who underwent either a myomectomy or UAE reported comparable symptom relief and HR-QoL. Clinicaltrials.Gov Identifier: NCT02260752