Elsevier

Fertility and Sterility

Volume 93, Issue 4, 1 March 2010, Pages 1104-1111
Fertility and Sterility

Male factor
Semen quality in fertile men in relation to psychosocial stress

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2008.12.018Get rights and content
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Objective

To examine the association between stressful life events and semen parameters.

Design

Cross-sectional analysis in a pregnancy cohort study.

Setting

Prenatal clinics in five U.S. cities.

Patient(s)

Fertile men (n = 744) in the Study for Future Families, a cohort study of pregnant women and their partners.

Intervention(s)

None.

Main Outcome Measure(s)

Sperm concentration, percent motile, and percent normal morphology and classification above/below World Health Organization (WHO) cutoffs for semen quality.

Result(s)

After adjusting for confounders, men reporting 2+ recent stressful life events had an increased risk of being classified below WHO thresholds for “normal” defined by concentration, motility, and morphology criteria compared with men reporting <2 stressful life events (odds ratio [OR] = 2.06; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.18, 3.61; OR = 1.54; 95% CI, 1.04, 2.29; OR = 1.93; 95% CI, 1.02, 3.66 for concentration, motility and morphology, respectively). Men experiencing 2+ stressful life events had lower sperm concentration (log scale, β = −0.25; 95% CI, −0.38, −0.11) and lower percent motile sperm (β = −1.95; 95% CI, −3.98, 0.07), but percent normal morphology was less affected.

Conclusion(s)

These results suggest that stressful life events may be associated with decreased semen quality in fertile men. The experience of psychosocial stress may be a modifiable factor in the development of idiopathic infertility.

Key Words

Sperm concentration
sperm motility
sperm morphology
semen quality
psychosocial stress
life events

Cited by (0)

A.L.G. has nothing to disclose. F.L. has nothing to disclose. C.B. has nothing to disclose. E.Z.D. has nothing to disclose. D.G. has nothing to disclose. J.W.O. has nothing to disclose. J.B.R. has nothing to disclose. A.S. has nothing to disclose. C.W. has nothing to disclose. S.H.S. has nothing to disclose.

This work was supported by the National Institute of Health grant nos. R01-ES09916 to the University of Missouri from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS); MO1-RR00400 to the University of Minnesota General Clinical Research Center; and MO1-RR0425 to the Research and Education Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the Cedars-Sinai Research Institute from the National Center for Research Resources.