Abstract
Male infertility is an emerging problem in both humans and animals, and the knowledge of its causes is the first step to identifying new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. In humans, alteration of sperm DNA methylation have been related to poor quality semen, impaired seminal parameters, azoospermia and reduced fertility. Although semen analysis is routinely used to evaluate the male reproductive potential in the canine species, no authors have attempted to relate semen characteristics to the sperm global DNA methylation (SGDM). The aim of this study was to evaluate the SGDM level in healthy dogs and to correlate it with semen parameters that are currently used in dog semen analyses. Conventional and unconventional (sperm DNA fragmentation and SGDM) seminal parameters of thirty dogs from different breeds were evaluated. A positive correlation was found between SGDM and sperm concentration (r = 0.41; p < 0.05), and total sperm count (r = 0.61; p < 0.001); SGDM was significantly lower in oligozoospermic vs non-oligozoospermic dogs (4.3% vs. 8.7%; p < 0.005). Our findings suggest that SGDM levels are related to conventional seminal parameters, and could be used as a marker of testis function and spermatogenesis in dogs.
Highlights
Accepted: 16 March 2021Reproduction and fertility are the most important traits in domestic animals; a lot of studies are aimed at identifying the causes of reproduction failure in domestic species.Among the most investigated fields there are the disorders of sex development [1,2,3,4,5,6] and reproductive performance [7,8,9,10,11,12]
According to Spearman’s rank coefficient (Table S3), a regular positive correlation was found between body weight and sperm concentration (r = 0.5; p < 0.005) and between body weight and total sperm count (r = 0.6; p < 0.05) (Figure S1) while a regular positive correlation and a strong positive correlation were found between sperm global DNA methylation (SGDM) percentage and sperm concentration (r = 0.4; p < 0.05), and total sperm count (r = 0.6; p < 0.001), respectively (Figure 1)
Percentage was significantly lower in oligozoospermic dogs, when compared to those with total sperm counts above the normality threshold (4.3% vs. 8.7%; p < 0.005) (Figure 2), whereas no significant difference was found in SGDM percentage when stratifying animals based on progressive sperm motility or sperm morphology normality thresholds
Summary
Accepted: 16 March 2021Reproduction and fertility are the most important traits in domestic animals; a lot of studies are aimed at identifying the causes of reproduction failure in domestic species.Among the most investigated fields there are the disorders of sex development [1,2,3,4,5,6] and reproductive performance [7,8,9,10,11,12]. Reproduction and fertility are the most important traits in domestic animals; a lot of studies are aimed at identifying the causes of reproduction failure in domestic species. The occurrence of male infertility is an emerging problem and the knowledge of its causes is the first step to identifying new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. The main analyses used to evaluate the semen in domestic animals are divided into qualitative (semen volume, aspect, viscosity and pH) and quantitative (sperm concentration/count, motility, morphology, vitality, DNA fragmentation, morphometric) [13,14,15]. Evidence for a link between epigenetic markers and male fertility was provided by studies in rodent models, which revealed that exposure to 5-azacytidine triggers a dose-dependent DNA hypomethylation in spermatozoa [17].
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