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Male infertility accounts for approximately 40% of infertility cases. There are many causes of male infertility, including environmental factors, age, lifestyle, infections, varicocele, and cancerous pathologies. Severe oligozoospermia, cryptozoospermia, and azoospermia (obstructive and non-obstructive) are identified as severe male factor infertility, once considered conditions of sterility. Today, in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques are the only treatment strategy in cases of male factor infertility for which new methodologies have been developed in the manipulation of spermatozoa to achieve fertilization and increase success rates. This review is an update of in vitro manipulation techniques, in particular sperm selection, emphasizing clinical case-specific methodology. The success of an IVF process is related to infertility diagnosis, appropriate choice of treatment, and effective sperm preparation and selection. In fact, selecting the best spermatozoa to guarantee an optimal paternal heritage means increasing the blastulation, implantation, ongoing pregnancy and live birth rates, resulting in the greater success of IVF techniques., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they do not have any commercial or associative interests that represent a conflict of interest in connection with the work submitted. S.F. is also an employee of CooperSurgical Fertility Solutions but the company had no knowledge of, or role in the design, execution, interpretation or writing of this review article.

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease, characterized by gradual cartilage degradation, bone remodeling, synovitis, and chronic pain. Due to the limited self-healing capacity in condylar cartilage, traditional clinical therapy have limited symptom-modifying and structure-modifying effects to restore impaired cartilage as well as other TMJ tissues. In last years, stem cell-based therapy has collected much attention as a possible approach toward tissue repair and regeneration. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), derived from the bone marrow, synovium, and even umbilical cord, play a role as seed cells for the cartilage regeneration of TMJ. MSCs possess multilineage differentiation potential, including chondrogenic differentiation as well as osteogenic differentiation. In addition, the modulations of MSCs exert anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects under aberrant conditions. Furthermore, MSCs combined with appropriate scaffolds can form cartilaginous or even osseous compartments to repair damaged tissue and impaired function of TMJ. In this review, we will describe the potential sources of MSCs and novel approaches for the cartilage regeneration of TMJ, particularly focusing on the MSC-based therapy and tissue engineering., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 by Mutaz B. Habal, MD.)