A Complement for the WHO Laboratory Manual for the Examination and Processing of Human Semen (First Edition, 2010)

The WHO “Laboratory manual for the Examination and processing of human semen” is a reference guide, firstly published in 1980, to standardize the procedures for the examination of human semen. It has been updated three times; the last version was published in 2010 (1) It provided guidance about many aspect of semen examination like: semen collection, macroscopic and microscopic examinations, immunological properties, microbiological properties and biochemical properties of seminal plasma. Semen examination is the first laboratory test to study the physio‐patological testicular function in adults and it may also be useful for investigating male fertility status as well as monitoring spermatogenesis during and following male fertility regulation. The aim of this work is trying to standardize the way of describing in clinical laboratory reports the properties related to semen examination. The systematic syntax described here is the one recommended jointly by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC), and endorsed by many other scientific and health care organisations, for all types of properties measured or examined in the clinical laboratory (2,3). This syntax is intended as a mean to improve the communication worldwide on semen determinations, both measurements and examinations. The IUPAC‐IFCC systematic syntax of any property requires the description of: (i) the biological system under study [e.g.: semen], (ii) the system component taken into account [e.g.: Spermatozoa], and (iii) the kind‐of‐property [e.g.: number (of Spermatozoa) fraction]. When necessary, a specification may be added in parenthesis to any of these elements. Fixing the order of these three elements —system, component and kind‐of‐property— according to the internationally recommended syntax, the outcome is a phrase that, in short, describes a generic property as follows: System(specification)—Component(specification); kind‐of‐property(specification) The specific rules to describe the elements of a generic property and the examination result are given in the following points.