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  4. What happens to sperm inside the female body?
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What happens to sperm inside the female body?

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Offline IzzieC (OP)

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What happens to sperm inside the female body?
« on: 01/03/2018 14:23:16 »
Suri asks:

Recently I saw BBC documentary inside the human body, in that when the sperm enters the female body, some of them were attacked and engulfed by Macrophages. Will the enzymes in macrophages digest the sperm? What will happen to the digested materials of sperm in inside the macrophages?

Can you help?
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Offline evan_au

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Re: What happens to sperm inside the female body?
« Reply #1 on: 01/03/2018 21:07:20 »
Macrophages are part of the immune system; they engulf and destroy foreign invaders, usually pretty successfully (apart from a few bacteria like Listeria and viruses like HIV that actually thrive and spread inside the immune system).

If a woman's immune system is overactive, or previously sensitised to sperm, it may engulf and destroy all sperm, rendering the woman infertile.
Assisted fertilisation techniques ("test tube babies") may assist in such cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrophage
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