Semen quality and human fertility: a prospective study with healthy couples.
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TLDR
Several semen quality measures were associated significantly with pregnancy rate, with percentage morphologically normal sperm by strict criteria and measures involving total number of sperm showing particularly strong associations.Abstract:
Measures of semen quality are used as surrogate measures of male fertility in clinical andrology, reproductive toxicology, epidemiology, and risk assessment. However, only limited data are available to relate those measures to fertility. This prospective study with 210 reproductive-age couples was conducted to provide information on the value of semen quality measures for predicting human male fertility potential and for development of models to estimate the effects of changes in semen quality on fertility in a given population for risk assessment. Couples without known risk factors for infertility and who had discontinued contraception to have a child were accepted. The study followed each couple for up to 12 menstrual cycles while they attempted to conceive and evaluated semen quality measures from multiple ejaculates per man with known abstinence intervals. For each cycle, the day of ovulation was predicted, and the couple was advised to have intercourse multiple times on that day and on the days around it. Among the demographic variables assessed, parity, contraception status prior to entering the study, male education level, and male smoking were associated significantly with 12-cycle pregnancy rate. Several semen quality measures also were associated significantly with pregnancy rate, with percentage morphologically normal sperm by strict criteria and measures involving total number of sperm showing particularly strong associations. Localized regression-smoothing plots of semen quality data against proportion of couples pregnant suggested levels below which fertility declines for several semen quality measures. These results have applications in both clinical andrology and in assessment of risk to male fecundity from environmental or pharmaceutical exposures. In particular, they contribute information on behavior of fertility with varying semen quality and can allow development of models to predict effects on fertility in populations from decrements in semen quality.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
World Health Organization reference values for human semen characteristics
Trevor G. Cooper,Elizabeth A. Noonan,Sigrid von Eckardstein,Jacques Auger,H.W. Gordon Baker,Hermann M. Behre,Trine B. Haugen,Thinus F. Kruger,Christina Wang,Michael T. Mbizvo,Kirsten M. Vogelsong +10 more
TL;DR: Semen quality of the reference population was superior to that of the men from the general population and normozoospermic men, and provide an appropriate tool in conjunction with clinical data to evaluate a patient's semen quality and prospects for fertility.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sperm Morphology, Motility, and Concentration in Fertile and Infertile Men
David S. Guzick,James W. Overstreet,Pam Factor-Litvak,Charlene Brazil,Steven T. Nakajima,Christos Coutifaris,Sandra Ann Carson,Pauline Cisneros,Michael P. Steinkampf,Joseph A. Hill,Dong Xu,Donna L. Vogel +11 more
TL;DR: Threshold values for sperm concentration, motility, and morphology can be used to classify men as subfertile, of indeterminate fertility, or fertile and none of the measures are diagnostic of infertility.
Journal ArticleDOI
Subfecundity in overweight and obese couples
Cecilia Høst Ramlau-Hansen,Ane Marie Thulstrup,Ellen A. Nohr,Jens Peter Bonde,Thorkild I. A. Sørensen,Jørn Olsen +5 more
TL;DR: Couples have a high risk of being subfecund if they are both obese and this work found a dose-response relationship between increasing BMI group and subFecundity (a TTP of more than 12 months).
Journal ArticleDOI
The 'oestrogen hypothesis'- where do we stand now?
TL;DR: Whether new data has emerged to support the suggestion that increased oestrogen exposure could cause human male reproductive developmental disorders is considered and new data on potential routes via which such increased exposure could have occurred are reviewed.
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