Ten-year variation in semen parameters and sperm deoxyribonucleic acid integrity in a healthy fertile man

Abstract

To report parameters in semen samples and sperm DNA integrity in a healthy fertile volunteer over a 10-year period. Case report. University-affiliated teaching hospital. None. Semen samples from a nonsmoking healthy male volunteer of proven fertility aged from 40 to 50 years were collected and analyzed over a decade. Semen parameters (sperm count, total sperm count, percentage of progressive motility grades a+b, morphology, and percentage of living spermatozoa) and sperm DNA integrity, measured by sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) and terminal uridine nick-end labeling (TUNEL) assay. Median (min-max) value of total sperm count was 330 (126-511) million. Motility and vitality presented a median of 50% (40%-75%) and 78% (53%-92%), respectively. Among semen parameters, morphology and vitality showed the lowest within-subject coefficient of variation (CV(W)) and the total sperm count the highest (8.1% and 12.0% vs. 34.9%). Median values of DNA fragmentation index (DFI) and high DNA stainability (HDS) were 12.7% (7.9%-16.5%) and 6.5% (5.5%-8.2%), respectively. Sperm DNA fragmentation presented a median value of 8.9%, a minimum value of 1.4% and maximum value of 18.6%. Compared with TUNEL data, SCSA parameters (DFI and HDS) showed less variation over the data collection period (47.4% vs. 22.4% and 13.0%, respectively). Our data show that in this healthy fertile volunteer, semen parameters and sperm DNA integrity remained normal, and no trend was observed over the study period. More interestingly, in this subject aged from 40 to 50 years old, sperm nucleus status presented less than 20% of sperm DNA fragmentation over a decade.