Editorial: Advances in Andrology and Male Reproductive Health

Andrology, the branch of medicine concerned with male reproductive health, emerged as a specialty at the end of the nineteenth century. However, it was not until the latter half of the past century that andrology had been recognized as one of the most intriguing sub-specialties of human reproduction. This is due to rapidly rising volume of scientific evidence that document the critical role of spermatozoa in the fertilization process. Due to the true nature of research involving the classical disciplines of physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology, scientific knowledge and application of andrology evolve continuously. Invariably, it is leading to a growth in andrological information and better understanding of the field of male reproductive biology. The scope of modern andrology now covers a wide spectrum from genetic studies to pubertal changes in the male and from infertility and assisted reproduction techniques to disorders of the prostate, sexual function and contraception. In this Special Issue of The Open Reproductive Science Journal, we examine some of these technical developments by highlighting the most up-to-date advances and contentious issues in male reproduction in a collection of high quality reviews written by distinguished experts in their fields. These topics were chosen to demonstrate the exciting breadth of andrology and the opportunity it holds for both understanding and improvement of male reproductive health. This Special Issue commences with a provocative commentary that presents a critical appraisal of the new 5 th edition World Health Organization (WHO) reference values for laboratory semen evaluation. Reference values were obtained from data involving approximately two thousand men who were able to impregnate their wives in a period of twelve months or less. Apart from total sperm number per ejaculate, the cutoff limits of these distributions are lower than the 'normal' or 'reference' values of previous WHO manual editions. Despite the notable advance of using evidence-based data to obtain the new limits, a systematic review of the literature was not performed to identify all data on semen quality in various populations. Conversely, the generation of the new WHO reference limits was biased by pooling very few studies coming mainly from Northern European cities. From these data, it seems unsound to assume, as proposed by the 5 th edition WHO manual, that the reference values represent global semen characteristics of fertile men. The authors go on by discussing other flaws of the newly proposed reference limits for the semen analysis parameters and …