The best stain for morphological study of human seminal fluid's smears

Abstract EN

There is a high need for proper evaluation of the morphological features of human sperms.

The importance of this lies in the field of andrology, male fertility and in vitro fertilization.

The wet smears can give rough clue about the shape of the sperms, but it is neither accurate nor reproducible.

This study aimed to determine the best stain which can be used for seminal fluid cytology Methods : this study was conducted in Port Sudan, Red Sea State, Sudan in the period from October 2006 to September 2007.

The total number of patients was 50.

Samples which were collected from normospermic patients (NSP) were prepared by direct smear technique.

Samples which were collected from oligospermic patients (OSP) and azoospermic patients (ASP) were prepared by direct smear technique and also by indirect smear techniques concentration method).

Smear samples were stained by freshly prepared Harris's Haematoxylin, Papanicolaou stain, May Grunwald Giemsa stains (MGG), supra vital stain, Giemsa stain and leishman's stain.

Results : In this study, the best stain was Harris's Haematoxylin (80 % excellent for the head of sperm, 70 % good for the neck, 59% excellent for the tail, 42 % very good for cells in background).

Harris's stain was followed by papanicolaou stain and the third best stain was supra vital stain.

MGG was better than Giemsa in staining of semen smears (75 % good versus 25 % good) in overall performance.

The worst stain was Leishman's stain Conclusion : Stained smears must be used for the morphological study of semen samples.

Harris's Haematoxylin is the best stain for semen cytological features.

Stains which used for the semen samples should be freshly prepared.