Penetration ability of human spermatozoa into standardized bovine cervical mucus (Penetrak) in patients with normal and pathological semen samples

Semen samples from 89 men were analyzed and evaluated with a standardized bovine cervical mucus penetration test (Penetrak). 29 patients had a normozoospermia, 22 patients a teratozoospermia and 38 patients an oligozoospermia of various degree. The most important parameters of semen analysis were compared with sperm mucus penetration. The sperm mucus penetration test correlated best with progressive motility (r = 0.6758), followed by total motility (r = 0.6302), sperm count (r = 0.6190), and % normal spermatozoa (r = 0.5493) (p less than 0.01 for each correlation coefficient). In the group of patients with normozoospermia 6 cases had been detected with insufficient sperm mucus penetration and in both groups with subfertility 15 cases with adequate sperm mucus penetration. 8 semen samples with normal sperm count and normal sperm motility were used for IVF. Only 6 patients with normal sperm penetration (greater than 30 mm/90') the spermatozoa fertilized the ova, but not from two patients, who had a sperm mucus penetration of less than 30 mm/90'. The study demonstrated that standardized bovine mucus penetration test detects disturbances of sperm motility which may not be discovered by conventional semen analysis.