The largest United States drugstore chains, CVS Caremark Corp. and Walgreen Co., are confident that they will generate sales by offering an answer to a question that some men are asking themselves: ‘Am I firing blanks?’ Particularly considering the leading cause of male infertility is low sperm count.
This spring, 7,800 Walgreens stores in the U.S. are planning to start selling a fertility test for men. This test will determine whether a man is producing an adequate amount of sperm to impregnate a woman. CVS and Walgreens already sell the SpermCheck fertility test online, for approximately $40.
The box features a happy couple holding their newborn. This test will join in excess of two dozen different varieties of fertility tests for females already for sale on the shelves of the Walgreens stores across the nation. The owner and distributor of SpermCheck which is closely held by ContraVac Inc., is hopeful that women will pay another $40 for the man’s test when they are buying their own ovulation tests and pregnancy kits. Especially because insurance will rarely cover infertility testing for men and these tests can run into the hundreds of dollars.
Generally, women carry the burden of determining issues that surround infertility, men do not usually say that they are going to the urologist and giving a semen sample to have their fertility determined. According to Lopez, director of ContraVac Inc., that reluctance has produced a $440 million a year male fertility test market in the U.S.
According to the CDC, approximately 7.3 million women in the U.S. have problems with pregnancies each year.
Many of the women assume that it is because of them and visit their gynecologists. These women are poked and prodded prior to being sent home. Very few of the husbands even consider that they are infertile despite the fact that an estimated 50% of fertility problems are related to men. In fact, 80% of the men in these relationships will not seek infertility evaluations.
Lopez is not only the director, but also a private-equity investor in ContraVac. The majority of ContraVac is owned by John Herr, who invented the SpermCheck test. SpermCheck was given approval by the FDA in 2010. Herr and his colleagues at the University of Virginia’s Center for Research in Contraceptive and Reproductive Health had started their research for this product nearly 30 years ago.
In the SpermCheck test kit there is a bottle of solution that the man will combine his semen with. Then, a few drops of this mixture are placed on the test strip. If a red line appears, the sperm count is within the normal range, which is no less than 20 million sperm per milliliter of semen. If the result is negative, there will be no color on the test stick. According to the instructions included with the test, any below normal reading indicates that a fertility evaluation needs to be performed by a physician.
