The Greek Cypriot scientist Eleftherios Diamandis, professor of biochemistry at the University of Toronto in Canada, made a significant breakthrough. He developed a biochemical test that can predict whether a man who suffers from azoospermia (no sperm count), can become a father through in vitro fertilization.
This test can dispense many men from the medical surgery that was necessary in order to find out if they had viable sperm. This process was painful and dangerous for the genitals of men.
Male infertility is responsible for half of the cases of infertility. Sometimes, men who do not produce any sperm, can be assisted through the appropriate fertility treatment, provided that the extraction of some spermatozoa is possible. Other men however, will be forced to resort to a sperm donor.
Azoospermia, which affects almost 2% of male population, is caused either by sperm production problems or by a blockage such that sperm production, although normal, cannot reach the ejaculate.
The new test can show, with almost 100% accuracy, which of the two types of azoospermia occurs, without the need of a prior biopsy. It is estimated that it will take one or two years before the test can be implemented by fertility clinics.
Eleftherios Diamandis is the head of the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, and the Hospital of Mount Sinai also in Toronto . He was born in 1952 in Lemessos and in 1976 he graduated from the Department of Chemistry, of Athens University, from where he received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry in 1979.
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