| Summary: | The aim of this work was to examine how a pre-freezing treatment with cholesterol-loaded cyclodextrins (CLC) affects boar sperm longevity, capacitation dynamics, ability to bind to a porcine telomerase-immortalised oviductal epithelial cell line (TERT-OPEC) in vitro and DNA integrity dynamics after freeze-thawing. Although the samples treated with CLC exhibited lower sperm quality than the control samples (P 0.05) after long-term incubation (26 h at 37 or 16 degrees C). Additionally, the CLC-treated spermatozoa underwent similar capacitation and DNA fragmentation dynamics as the control spermatozoa (P > 0.05). However, CLC-treated spermatozoa were better able to bind to TERT-OPEC in vitro (P < 0.0001). In conclusion, the pre-freezing treatment of boar spermatozoa with CLC enhanced the ability of the spermatozoa to bind to TERT-OPEC in vitro, which could have an effect on the establishment of the sperm reservoir in the ampullary-isthmic junction in vivo. Additionally, frozen-thawed spermatozoa can be stored at 16 degrees C for at least 6 h without a significant observable decline in sperm quality, which could be beneficial for the transport of thawed diluted doses of spermatozoa from the laboratory to the farm.
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