A study in Fertility and Sterility has investigated whether freeze-drying has a similar detrimental effect on sperm to cryopreservation in liquid nitrogen, which significantly reduces the motility, viability and DNA integrity of spermatozoa compared with fresh samples. Sperm samples from 30 men were aliquoted, with one sample freeze-dried and another stored in liquid nitrogen. Freeze-drying completely compromised sperm motility and viability; however, chromatin structure was unaltered compared to fresh samples, showing that DNA integrity was not affected by the freeze-drying procedure.