Sperm wash in three culture media: maximization of motile sperm recovery during swim-up incubation.

Three different culture media commonly used during in vitro gamete manipulations were studied for their efficacy in sperm wash procedure. Highest numbers of motile sperm were recovered at 6 hours following incubation in WT-6 and Ham's F-10 media. However, WT-6 yielded higher motile sperm numbers than Ham's F-10. Swim-up sperm number reached a peak at 3 hours following incubation in BWW. A period of 2 to 6 hours of incubation of sperm pellets overlayed with sperm wash media resulted in highly enriched motile sperm fractions free of dead spermatozoa and seminal debri.