Department of Chemical Engineering, Queen's University, 19 Division Street, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G8.
Nat Rev Urol. 2017 Dec;14(12):707-730. doi: 10.1038/nrurol.2017.175. Epub 2017 Oct 31.
Infertility is a growing global health issue with far-reaching socioeconomic implications. A downward trend in male fertility highlights the acute need for affordable and accessible diagnosis and treatment. Assisted reproductive technologies are effective in treating male infertility, but their success rate has plateaued at ∼33% per cycle. Many emerging opportunities exist for microfluidics - a mature technology in other biomedical areas - in male infertility diagnosis and treatment, and promising microfluidic approaches are under investigation for addressing male infertility. Microfluidic approaches can improve our fundamental understanding of sperm motion, and developments in microfluidic devices that use microfabrication and sperm behaviour can aid semen analysis and sperm selection. Many burgeoning possibilities exist for engineers, biologists, and clinicians to improve current practices for infertility diagnosis and treatment. The most promising avenues have the potential to improve medical practice, moving innovations from research laboratories to clinics and patients in the near future.
不孕症是一个日益严重的全球性健康问题，具有深远的社会经济影响。男性生育力呈下降趋势，这凸显出迫切需要负担得起且可及的诊断和治疗方法。辅助生殖技术在治疗男性不育症方面非常有效，但每个周期的成功率已稳定在约 33%。在男性不育症的诊断和治疗方面，微流控技术（其他生物医学领域中一项成熟的技术）存在许多新兴机会，并且正在研究有前途的微流控方法来解决男性不育症。微流控方法可以提高我们对精子运动的基本认识，并且在使用微加工和精子行为的微流控设备方面的发展可以辅助精液分析和精子选择。工程师、生物学家和临床医生有许多新的可能性来改进当前的不孕症诊断和治疗实践。最有前途的途径有可能改善医疗实践，将创新从研究实验室推向临床和患者，在不久的将来实现这一目标。
