The Instituto Bernabeu and the Chair of Reproductive Medicine from the UA present a study on how nicotine affects sperm at the Histology Congress

The Instituto Bernabeu and the Chair of Reproductive Medicine of Alicante University (UA) have presented a research project related to smoking and fertility at the 19^th Congress of the Spanish Society of Histology and Tissue Engineering, the 4^th Ibero-American Congress of Histology and the 7^th International Congress of Histology and Tissue Engineering held in Santiago de Compostela.

The title of the joint project that was presented at the Conference is “α7–Nicotinic receptor expression is at higher densities at the equatorial band in human sperm cells”. It is part of a line of research carried out by the Instituto Bernabeu and the Chair of Alicante University on the nervous system receptors and sperm. The researchers have discovered that there is a receptor in the head of the sperm called nicotinic, which in male smokers can alter the capacity to fertilize the ovum. To discover this researchers have used high-resolution techniques that help detect these receptors accurately.