[Free Beacon] The National Institutes of Health is spending over $300,000 performing "in-home semen testing," which will pay men $20 for their samples as part of a study hoping to fight infertility.Boston University is conducting the "Feasibility of In-Home Semen Testing" project, which was awarded on Dec. 1.
Ok, so this is our last session here at the center. Has everyone got the website and test kits ?
"The prevalence of impaired fecundity has been increasing over the last decade and few modifiable risk factors for infertility have been identified," according to the grant for the project. "Male factor contributes to 50 [percent] of all infertility."
The researchers said they want to broaden the pool of semen testing, which they said normally only takes place in fertility treatment centers, "thereby limiting generalizability."
"The enrollment of large numbers of men from the general population prior to conception represents a unique opportunity to assess the feasibility of in-home semen testing," the grant states.
The NIH previously awarded the researchers $337,483 for a study that recruited couples wanting to conceive online and tracked how long it took them to get pregnant. Now, taking from a group of over 1,200 recruited men from the previous project, the researchers will pay men $20 to have their sperm tested at home.
The home kits will allow for "repeated measures of sperm concentration, sperm motility, and semen volume."
"Subjects will send test results back to investigators via a secure smartphone application," the grant states.
| Sales of used smartphones just nose-dived on e-bay |
Semen quality will be evaluated in relation to obesity, stress, and depression.