Unlike women, men can produce the reproductive cells to sperm right up to a very old age. In fact they continue to produce them, they don’t stop producing unless there is something clinically getting in the way of them. But, the quality of this sperm does decline with age. The number of sperm produced declines, the quality of this sperm DNA declines also. There’s an accumulation of mutations and damage to the sperm DNA that’s associated with older men. The other thing is that older men tend to father children that have more or higher prevalence of neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and autism and that’s an association that’s been made for many years now. So, even though men do produce sperm up to a very old age, the quality of the sperm can decline and the risks of offspring’s neurological abnormalities or such as schizophrenia and autism increases as well.
The research shows that male infertility also declines with age. Perhaps not as sharply as women do when they start getting to the age of 35 and then 40 where we see a huge decline in their fertility potential. So, for men it’s not the same as going through the same menopause that women do and how quickly things can change when above the age of 40 but we do see a steady decline in the the quality and the quantity of the sperm produced as men get older.
Over the last 10 years there is increasing awareness that paternal factors are affected by the age factor. So, age is not only related to the maternal factor. Obviously, as the age advances, the man may experience the reduction in his fertility and it is not only related to the number, quantitative characteristics of the sperm but he may have low quality of the sperm and spermatoza. It has been shown that men with advanced paternal age have lower chances for pregnancy when they proceed with assisted reproduction techniques. The partners of man with advanced paternal age, have higher chances for miscarriage.
Yes. We used to think that the only age that really mattered in a couple having children was maternal age or the women’s age but over the last few years, we’ve realized that men’s age is really important too and that between 37 and 40, the quality of a man’s sperm decreases and a couple of huge studies have come out (one from America and one from India) showing that the DNA quality of men’s sperm decreases and the damage increase when men get older. Now, I know we’ve always thought that men’s ability to father children went on until the day they died (like Charlie Chaplin or Picasso or even Ronnie Woods or some of the celebrities of today) but the thing is the common link in all of those men is that they have young partners and young partners with young eggs. The eggs are actually able to repair some of the sperm DNA damage but for most people they have a partner who is approximately the same age as them. So as the man gets older, his partner often gets older or she is an older woman and so that’s not the case for them. So with older men in the general population there’s a decrease in their fertility as they get older.
Fertility starts to decline really. Sperm quality kind of just changes from when men are kind of mid-40s onwards. The quality of the sperm declines, the amount of sperm that’s got DNA fragmentation it can increase, the chance of older men having pregnancies that miscarry increases and the chance of certain abnormalities in the children produced can also increase. That’s not to say that it’s likely this only applies to small numbers of people but certainly, male age can have an impact on reproductive success.
This topic is very complex as the evidence is very contradictory. In general it seems that increased male age can be associated with a longer time to achieve conception, probably due to the presence of acquired medical conditions associated with an older aged man. Also it has been reported that the worsening of semen quality and increase in sperm DNA fragmentation and this is very important because sperm DNA fragmentation has been associated with the increased rate of fetal abnormalities and spontaneous abortion rates, particularly during the first trimester. Therefore it is important to consider the age of male partners when planning a pregnancy.
When we talk about semen analysis results and increasing paternal age then someone will think about the number of sperm found of the ejaculate, motility of the sperm, type of progression of the sperm and also morphology that someone would have thought a few years ago so not necessarily.
We would expect, if we compare Mark who is 30 and Mark who is 40 to another Mark who is 50 year old, we might see a decline in the number of sperm on the ejaculate, maybe a less sperm with less motility or worse morphology as well but this is not necessarily the case.
We have seen this by comparing different age groups of patients we have in some cases we have indeed see a decrease decline on the basic semen parameters while other patients of different age groups they have quite similar values however we need to bear in mind that when we talk about semen analysis and sperm quality overall we need to think about sperm DNA and we have emerging data today and also although more work needs to be done what we’ve seen so far today is that the data suggests that with increasing paternal age, the quality of the sperm DNA can deteriorate so certainly we have reasons to believe that with increasing paternal age the quality of the sperm it can deteriorate and this is something that the patients and obviously healthcare professionals need to take into account.
Aging is an inevitable process associated with multiple physiological changes, some of which affect the reproductive organs. Therefore, age is an important factor to take into account both in men and women when we talk about fertility.
The sperm analysis suffers changes in quantity and quality of semen. And we can see these changes in the semen volume (which is called hypospermia), we can see a decrease of sperm concentration (oligozoospermia), low motility (which is called asthenozoospermia) and abnormal sperm morphology (teratospermia). Moreover, we can detect other factors such as the increase of DNA fragmentation that has a huge impact in male fertility.
So now I’m going to explain a little bit about these changes:
I will start with the seminal volume. There is a slow but progressive reduction in the seminal volume, and this reduction is due to the aging of the seminal vesicles that are the ones that produce the fluid that carries the sperm from the testicles. Moreover, prostatic changes, such as the atrophy of smooth muscles, may also affect semen volume. The reports show a decrease in volume of 0.15% to 0.2% per year of age, what means 3% to 4% decrease in seminal volume over a 20-year period.
Regarding sperm concentration, I want to highlight that as always happens in science, we can find a lot of studies that prove the influence of age in sperm concentration but it’s true that we can also find some of them that don’t show enough evidence. Some of them even suggested an increase in sperm concentration as an individual ages.
Regarding motility, while we have some studies for and against the alteration of concentration, evidence consistently indicates that sperm motility decreases with advancing age. It’s interesting to see that the motility of sperm can decrease per year between 0.17 and 0.6%, which means a decline in motility around 3% to 12% in 20 years.
To understand this alteration a little bit, we have to think that the motility is acquired during sperm transit through the prostate and the epididymis, so the decrease in motility is suspected to be due to age-related decline in the function of these glands. Moreover, the alterations of the epididymis may also cause alterations in sperm mitochondrial functioning, which is paramount related to sperm motility.
As well as motility, morphology appears to decrease with advancing male age. Studies indicate a decline in the normal sperm morphology of 0.2% to 0.9% per year of age, and that means a reduction of 4% to 18% in normal morphology forms in 20 years.
Finally, I would like to talk about DNA fragmentation, because there has been a fair amount of evidence that indicates the increase in nuclear DNA fragmentation in sperm in relation to the increase in paternal age.
It’s thought that this is the result of increasing oxidative stress over time. This stress is related with lifestyle like the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, unhealthy eating habits and also is related with environmental factors such as radiation and pollution. In addition, illness, injuries, and chronic health problems can contribute to male infertility evolving over the years.
It’s true that sperm DNA fragmentation is seen in men of all age groups, but it is more clearly seen in advancing aged men. So, a higher percentage of fragmentation has been found in men aged over 40 years, compared with those of younger age. In addition, the DNA fragmentation and alteration will also have an impact on the motility and the morphology of the sperm. So we can see how all these changes can be related to the final reduction of male fertility when men reach the age of 45 years on average.
That’s a very interesting hot topic. In the last 40 years, we have detected a decreasing sperm count by almost 50%. The sperm decrease begins really at age 20 and then it continues all the way to the age of 80. Now the sperm count goes down by approximately 1.4% per year and the morphology and motility; these are the other two characteristics of the sperm analysis, also decrease by a little bit less. Overall, I would like to say that on the average 1 or 2% per year decrease of the sperm analysis. One of the reasons the use of IVF is increasing by 10% per year is of course the worsening spermograms that we encounter, the other reason of course is the age of the woman and other causes from the female part which make IVF so demanding in the last decade.
Latest publications are showing that men’s age is important in terms of success rate. The older the patient, the lower the quality of the sperm and the lower are the chances of pregnancy. More over it has been shown that it can affect miscarriage rate. However it is still controversial which is the cut of man age that can be affecting. Some publications say from 40 above and the others from 45.
