There’s a growing range of at-home semen tests available for men who are concerned about their fertility. Here is what you need to know about how at-home fertility tests work and whether you can trust the results.
How to at-home male fertility tests work?
Six at-home semen tests are approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration and are listed on the Australian Therapeutic Goods Register, but even that is no guarantee they are useful.
At-home semen tests use a few different types of technology. Some work in the same way as COVID-19 RATs, while others use devices supplied with the test kits. There are a few that connect to a phone, allowing the user to either count sperm themselves, or for counting to be done by image analysis software in an app.
The simplest at-home tests measure whether or not a semen sample contains any sperm. Others show whether sperm concentrations (the number of sperm per ml of semen) are lower than normal or supposedly high enough to allow a pregnancy. Some provide measurements of sperm motility (how well the sperm ‘swim’) along with estimated sperm concentrations.
However, even the most ‘advanced’ at-home tests provide only a fraction of the information needed for a doctor to properly assess fertility.
Are at-home semen tests accurate?
At-home male fertility tests put users at risk of receiving misleading results. This means a fertile user might think they are not, or someone infertile might be led to believe they are fertile. With laboratory tests, there are checks and balances to prevent false-negative and false-positive results and follow-up tests that help to confirm or explain test results.
The downsides of doing a semen test at home
With at-home semen tests, there’s no follow-up testing. But more critically, there’s no one to help interpret test results, help you understand them, or to perform other tests to provide a complete assessment of fertility.
For any semen test, there is no cut-off value for fertility, unless there are absolutely no sperm or they’re not moving at all (at-home tests aren’t sensitive enough to measure this). There are many things to consider when it comes to fertility; a semen test is only one part. Some people with semen test results that suggest they may be infertile actually have no problems conceiving a pregnancy, while others with normal semen test results have sperm that just can’t fertilise an egg (no semen test can tell you this).
It doesn’t paint a full picture of fertility
Fertility is something that is experienced by couples, not individuals. It takes (at least) two people to make a baby.
It is recommended that when a couple seeks care for infertility, investigations should be done for both partners. This is because they each may have problems that, alone, might not threaten fertility (they might be ‘sub-fertile’ instead of infertile), but together the problems combine to prevent them from having a baby. By providing information about only one partner, it is impossible to know about interactions with the other partner’s fertility status.
Doing a semen test at home might seem convenient, private and inexpensive. But it can’t provide a complete fertility assessment, it might cause unnecessary alarm or a false sense of security, and could delay seeing a specialist who can provide the help that’s needed to overcome problems with conception.
Some things in life are best left to the experts. The outcome is too important for do-it-yourself approaches. If you’re about to start trying for a family, book an appointment with your doctor for a preconception health check-up.
