When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first described spermatozoa to the Royal Society (Leeuwenhoek, Citation1678), little did he know that he would be starting a new branch of medical science: Andrology. Over 330 years later, we now know that male factor is implicated in as many as 50% of couples presenting at infertility clinics (Crosignani & Walters, Citation1994). Moreover, in recent years, there has been growing concern at the possibility that the incidence of male infertility may be increasing because of exposures to as yet unidentified environmental hazards (Skakkebaek et al., Citation2001). We are also continuing to discover more about the physiology and pathobiology of sperm (Aitken et al., Citation2010) and how sperm are transported through the female reproductive tract (Suarez and Pacey, Citation2006).
In spite of this long history of sperm research, developments of effective treatments for male factor infertility have proven illusive. For the overwhelming majority of cases, there are no therapies to improve the quantity or quality of sperm. The closest we have reached is the manipulation of individual sperm in the laboratory to facilitate fertilisation through intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) (Palermo et al., Citation1992). However, even though that ICSI has become commonplace, the majority of andrologists would agree this is a technique to circumvent the problem rather provide an effective cure. Further research is clearly needed.
In terms of Andrology, the year 2010 did not simply signal the end of another decade. During 2010 there were a number of key, influential publications and conferences. First, we saw the publication of the fifth edition of the ‘WHO Laboratory Manual for the Examination of Semen and Sperm-Cervical Mucus Interaction’ (WHO, Citation2010). This was long awaited and included revisions to the definition of the so-called ‘reference ranges’ for human semen quality based on data published by Cooper et al. (Citation2010). It also contained updated recommendations on laboratory techniques and was supported by a special edition of the Asian Journal of Andrology in January 2010.
Second, there was growing interest in the clinical relevance of the assessment of sperm DNA integrity (Barratt & De Jonge, Citation2010) with the January 2010 edition of Molecular Human Reproduction devoted to this topic. The measurement of sperm DNA integrity has been a controversial aspect of Andrology and so it is very useful to see a position report published by ESHRE (Barratt et al., Citation2010) concerning the methods for detection, and recommendations for future research.
Third, in January 2010 the British Fertility Society (BFS) held its annual meeting in Bristol, UK, with the theme of ‘Recent Advances in Male Fertility’. This followed a very successful meeting of the British Andrology Society (BAS) in November 2009 at the University of Belfast with the title ‘Recent Developments and Future Perspectives in Andrology’. At these meetings over 20 speakers delivered invited presentations covering the full breadth of Andrology from bench science to clinical practice.
As a consequence of all this ‘Andrology Activity’, I proposed to the Editorial Board of Human Fertility that it would be timely to devote a special issue of the journal to this topic. This was agreed and the current issue (volume 13, issue 4) contains 14 manuscripts kindly submitted by speakers at the BAS and BFS meetings outlined above. The issue also contains a manuscript of new clinical guidelines for the management of testosterone deficiency and sexual disorders in men and women that was written jointly with the British Society for Sexual Medicine and also published jointly with the journal Maturitas (Wylie et al., Citation2010).
We are extremely grateful to those speakers who prepared manuscripts and would like to thank them for their timely delivery. Each manuscript has been peer-reviewed and we thank those reviewers who provided valuable comments and constructive criticism. In some instances, it may seem that the focus of the papers is narrow. However, we hope the reader will understand this as an inevitable consequence of asking authors to base their papers on the lecture titles they were asked to present. In spite of this, we feel that the papers within the issue represent a significant overview of the topic, with laboratory research, epidemiology, clinical and laboratory practice and future insights and developments.
Previous special issues of Human Fertility were produced in 2002 (volume 5, issue 1S) following a meeting to celebrate the life and work of Professor Michael Hull (Bristol) and in 2003 (volume 6, issue 2S) summarising a joint meeting at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 2000. In 2005, volume 8, issue 2 celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Warnock Report and included articles from a joint meeting of the RCOG, HFEA and BFS held in 2004.
Such endeavours are not the work of just one individual and so I am most grateful for the assistance of Jane Stewart who is also on the Editorial Board as well as Sheena Lewis and Raj Mathur who had chaired the organising committee that put together the programmes for the BAS and BFS meetings, respectively. Collectively, we are grateful for the hard work of Sandra Downing (Editorial Assistant) and the wisdom and guidance of Henry Leese (Editor-in-Chief).
References
- Aitken, R.J., Baker, M.A., De Iuliis, G.N., & Nixon B. (2010). New insights into sperm physiology and pathology. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, 198, 99–115.
- Barratt, C.L., Aitken, R.J., Björndahl, L., Carrell, D.T., de Boer, P., Kvist, U., et al. (2010). Sperm DNA: organization, protection and vulnerability: from basic science to clinical applications – a position report. Human Reproduction, 25, 824–838.
- Barratt, C.L., & De Jonge, C.J. (2010). Clinical relevance of sperm DNAassessment: anupdate. Fertility and Sterility, 94, 1958–1959.
- Cooper, T.G., Noonan, E., von Eckardstein, S., Auger, J., Baker, H.W., Behre, H.M., et al. (2010). World Health Organization reference values for human semen characteristics. Human Reproduction Update, 16, 231–245.
- Crosignani, P.G., & Walters, D.E. (1994). Clinical pregnancy and male subfertility the ESHRE multicentre trial on the treatment of male subfertility. European society of human reproduction and embryology. Human Reproduction, 9, 1112–1118.
- Leeuwenhoek, A. (1678) Observationes D. Anthonii Lewenhoeck, de Natis e semine genitalis Animalculis. Philosophical Transactions, 12, 1040–1043.
- Palermo, G., Joris, H., Devroey, P., & Van Sterteghem, A.C. (1992). Pregnancies after intracytoplasmic sperm injection of a single spermatozoon into an oocyte. Lancet, 340, 17–18.
- Skakkebaek, N.E., Rajpert-De Meyts, E., & Main, K.M. (2001). Testicular dysgenesis syndrome: an increasingly common developmental disorder with environmental aspects. Human Reproduction, 16, 972–978.
- Suarez, S.S., & Pacey, A.A. (2006). Sperm transport in the female reproductive tract. Human Reproduction Update, 12, 23–37.
- World Health Organisation. (2010). WHO laboratory manual for the examination and processing of human semen, 5th ed. Geneva: World Health Organisation.
- Wylie, K., Rees, M., Hackett, G., Anderson, R., Bouloux, P.M., Cust, M., et al. (2010). Androgens, health and sexuality in women and men. Maturitas, 67, 275–289.