The Andrology laboratory at the Sophiahemmet recently became the first such laboratory in Europe to be accredited in accordance with the ISO-standard 17025. This is the international standard for medical laboratories. The routine measures of the laboratory for the examination of sperm samples have received the quality stamp of this accreditation. The control has been carried out by SWEDAC (Board for accreditation and technical control) and the work to gain accreditation has been going on for three years. Chemical and microbiological laboratories have, amongst others previously gained accreditation.

The accreditation is a quality control of the methods of the laboratory.

- The accreditation is a statement of the fact that we perform the tests that we receive orders for correctly and in way that is meaningful for the patient, says reader and doctor in medicine Rune Eliasson, (MD) Managing Director for the Andrology laboratory at the Sophiahemmet.

Details on how samples are to be treated once they arrive at the laboratory, how they are to be analysed, how the results are to be reported etc are all in a few hundred documents, drawn up during the course of the work. SWEDAC will check every year that these stipulated routines are adhered to and the accreditation is re-examined every three years.

Since the middle of the 1970', the Andrology laboratory at Sophiahemmet has been working on analysing semen from the man in childless couples. The task includes both studying the seminal fluid in a microscope and analysing the content of certain substances with chemical methods. In a microscope, the numbers of sperms are counted and their movement and shape are examined. The chemical analysis reveals how the various organs involved are working, i.e. the testicles, the epididymides, prostate and the seminal vesicles. The development work at the andrology laboratory consists mainly of new chemical methods in order to improve diagnosis of causes for childlessness.

The Andrology laboratory at the Sophiahemmet today has great possibilities to examine the quality in semen. According to Rune Eliasson, the doctors who refer patients do far from always use the existing possibilities for finding out what it wrong with a semen sample. The consequence of that is that they often quickly end up trying IVF, sometimes this is done unnecessarily.

- It is possible to go much further than we routinely do today, says Rune Eliasson.
If a sample contains few sperm, it may be a question of a temporary down-period. The testicles are very sensitive and many different things that can affect them negatively such as infections, smoking, alcohol consumption, stress, medicine.
A low sperm count can for example be due to the fact that man recently had an infection which led to a high fever.

- In the beginning of an investigation, two samples should always be taken as differences between them may be due to illness in one or more of the organs producing the semen. If a semen sample is bad, a new one should be examined within a few months; it takes two to three months for sperm production to recover from for example an infection.

Other factors than can have an effect on male fertility and sperm production are various medicines. The knowledge on how medicines secrete in the seminal fluid and affect the sperm is today very limited. Another area that needs further research is those mechanisms that control the seminal ejaculation in the man. If this is disrupted and the various components come in the wrong order, this may have an effect on the characteristics of the sperm cells and therefore probably also fertility.



For further information, please contact:

Rune Eliasson, Andrology laboratory Sophiahemmet
Box 5606
SE-114 86 STOCKHOLM
Phone: +46 8 89 97 02, +46 70 727 22 76
Fax: +46 8 739 30 84
E-mail: androloglab@remcat.com

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