title: A quick, reliable staining technique for human sperm morphology.
abstract: The evaluation of sperm morphology is still an important parameter in the diagnosis of the infertile male. Most techniques used for staining human sperm are very time-consuming. A routine stain used for determining differential count of leucocytes (Diff-Quik stain) was evaluated against the standard Papanicolaou stain. Morphology results from 20 duplicate semen smears using both staining methods were determined separately by 2 technicians using a blind protocol. No significant differences were observed when comparing the two staining methods (paired Student's t-test). The advantages of the Diff-Quik stain are: a) complete staining-to-reading time under 7 min, b) commercially prepared reagents, and c) case of staining procedure.
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007248:Infertility, Male / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D009845:Oligospermia / Q000473:pathology; D013094:Spermatozoa / Q000473:pathology*; D013194:Staining and Labeling / Q000379:methods*