VR use during sperm donation

Consenting, healthy, and accepted sperm donors produced ejaculates both with and without the use of a VR headset. Data on the duration of sexual abstinence, Body Mass Index (BMI), donation period, location, day of the year (i.e. season), and age were recorded, and semen parameters were measured by Computer Assisted Sperm Analysis (semen volume, sperm concentration, motility and motile sperm concentration). Anonymized data were analyzed with linear mixed and piecewise structural equation models. Both abstinence time and VR use had an effect on the total number of motile spermatozoa ejaculated. For short abstinence times, VR-use led to an increase in the number of motile sperm in the ejaculate. However, the predicted difference between VR and non-VR ejaculates decreased as abstinence time increased such that there was no difference by around a mean abstinence time of 58 hours. For longer abstinence times, total motile sperm counts were predicted to be lower when men used VR compared to those that did not.