Sperm DNA Damage: Correlation To Severity Of Semen Abnormalities

Sperm DNA Damage: Correlation To Severity Of Semen Abnormalities
Main Category: Fertility
Also Included In: Urology / Nephrology; Genetics
Article Date: 24 Nov 2008 - 1:00 PST

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (UroToday.com) - Evaluation of male fertility includes assessment of the standard semen parameters (SSP) and may include assessment of DNA damage. However, the relationship between DNA damage and SSP remains controversial. This study examined the the relationship of DNA damage to SSP in patients presenting for infertility evaluation.

The authors conducted an IRB approved retrospective review of semen samples from 2586 unselected non-azoospermic patients underwent computer-assisted semen analysis and flow cytometry based sperm DNA damage assessment expressed as the DNA Fragmentation Index (DFI). DFI was significantly negatively correlated to sperm concentration, motility, and normal morphology and positively correlated to age (P<0.001). DNA damage increased in relationship to the number of abnormalities in the SSP (P <0.001).

The authors concluded:

1. DNA damage is significantly related to standard parameters of semen analysis
2. DNA damage is significantly related to age
3. The degree of DNA damage increases with the number of abnormal parameters in a sample and is most severe in patients with oligo-astheno-teratospermia (OAT).

Editorial Comments:

The authors demonstrate the relationship between progressively more abnormal semen parameters and abnormal DFI. This is consistent with clinical observations and does not appear to demonstrate any incremental value to DFI assessment, in clinical practice, in the initial assessment of the infertile male.

Presented by S. I. Moskovtsev, J. Willis, and J. White, et al., at the 64th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine - November 8 - 12, 2008 - San Francisco, California

Reported by UroToday.com Contributing Editor Harris M. Nagler, MD

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His advice? "If my son or daughter was to ask, I'd tell them to have kids early -- and that's before 30."

Yo, dude, check your bio clock -- now
New studies warn that it isn't just women who become less fertile as they age
Sarah Treleaven , The Ottawa Citizen
Recently, I've had a lot of conversations about baby-making with my male friends.

"I worry that I might be too selfish to ever have children," said my friend Joe, 29, somewhat pensively over gin and cucumber cocktails. Ditto for Colin, who just broke up with a woman he loves because she wants to have kids in the next few years and, at 35, he just doesn't feel ready yet. Kids or no, they both feel like they have all the time in the world to decide.

I, on the other hand, just turned 30 and have been making a lot of jokes about needing an apartment with a second bedroom for my soon-to-be-frozen eggs.



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Font:****Lots of women wring their hands about having a baby. Not only do we have to worry about our plummeting fertility (which begins to tank in our mid-20s), but we also have to worry about job retention and advancement once those kids (come biology, adoption or surrogacy) eventually appear. And it's the physical limitations of the female ability to procreate that have placed such a heavy emphasis on the reproductive biological clock, shaping the way many women live, work and even date.

But evidence is increasingly emerging that men, too, have a reproductive biological clock -- and that it ticks much more loudly than most of us have thought. Even as stories occasionally emerge about septuagenarian and octogenarian men becoming proud papas -- author Saul Bellow, for example, fathered a child at 84 -- several recent studies are challenging the conventional wisdom that men have an invincible ability to procreate.

A French study released in July found that women's pregnancy rates drop and miscarriages increase when the mother is over 35 and the father is over 40. Another study suggests that a man's fertility begins to decrease as early as his 20s. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory tested men between the ages of 22 and 80, and found that semen volume and sperm motility were both significantly compromised by aging.

Additionally, the increased odds for older fathers producing genetic abnormalities have been well documented, and studies have demonstrated that fathers over 40 are six times more likely to produce an autistic child than fathers under 30.

The numbers related to schizophrenia are similarly compelling. A study utilizing health databases in Jerusalem found that fathers over 40 were twice as likely to produce schizophrenic children as fathers who were under 25; for fathers over 50, the odds tripled when compared to fathers who were under 25.

Dr. Harry Fisch, director of the Male Reproductive Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and the author of The Male Biological Clock, says that he's been ringing the alarm bell for years.

"There's a female biological clock; we all agree on the decline in fertility, more genetic problems and a decline in estrogen.

"The same thing happens in men -- a little bit differently, but essentially the same," Fisch says. "Why is it important? Well, demographically more men and women are waiting until they're over 30 to have a baby."

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