Is sperm motility measured by the percentage of sperms that can move/are motile? Or is it the percentage of the speed of the sperm?
For example, 60% and above is considered a good motility number. Does that mean 40% of the sample does not move, or does that mean that it’s speed is 60% fast? I think a "lazy sperm" is if the motility percentage is so low that the sperm moves much too slow and randomly to find its way to the egg so a man can be considered infertile, for example if the motility were 20%. But others I read calculate it to mean only 20% of the sperm can move and that’s what motility means. Any idea?
Barcode – what I’m saying is that I’ve read two different definitions – almost every website describes it one way or the other.
Way One: the % indicates the percentage of the sperm that move.
Way Two: the % indicates the percentage of optimal speed the sperm moves. So 100% could be moving, but they are only moving at 60% of optimal speed if the motility were to be "60%"
Hope that makes sense.
For example it’s said that the number of sperm isn’t as important as the motility percentage. So 10,000,000 sperm with a 90% motility are considered superior to 80,000,000 sperm with 40% motility from what I read.
It is a matter of the number that are moving quickly not the speed forward.
Sperm motility describes the ability of sperm to move properly towards an egg. This can also be thought of as the ‘quality’ of the sperm, which is a factor in successful pregnancies, as opposed to the ‘quantity’. Sperm which do not properly ‘swim’, will not reach the egg in order to fertilize it. Sperm motility facilitates the passage of the sperm through the zona pellucida, which is a membrane that surrounds the plasma membrane of an oocyte. For example, in the wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus, sperm aggregates form mobile trains that possess an enhanced fertilization capability because they are better suited to navigate the viscous environment of the female reproductive tract. The trains move in a sinusoidal motion, individual spermatozoa have impaired fertilization capacity.
Normal Sperm Motility : 40 % or more of the sperm are motile and mean sperm velocity is 20 (µm/s (micro meter / second)) or more.
Does that mean you can’t believe what you’ve read – and why would answers in here indicate anything different?