Progesterone at the picomolar range is a chemoattractant for mammalian spermatozoa

TEVES, ME; BARBANO, F; GUIDOBALDI, HA; SANCHEZ, R; MISKA, W; GIOJALAS, LC

FERTILITY AND STERILITY

Elsevier for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine

Año: 2006 vol. 86 p. 745 - 749

0015-0282

By means of a videomicroscopy system and a computer image analysis, we performed chemotaxis assays to detect true chemotaxis in human spermatozoa, in parallel to immunohistochemistry detection of progesterone inside the cumulus cells. Progesterone indeed chemotactically guides mammalian spermatozoa at very low hormone concentrations, and the cumulus oophorus could be a potential place for sperm chemotaxis mediated by progesterone in vivo.