Reduced Testicular Steroidogenesis and Increased Semen Oxidative Stress in Male Partners as Novel Markers of Recurrent Miscarriage
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract BACKGROUND Recurrent pregnancy loss, (RPL) affecting 1%–2% of couples, is defined as ≥3 consecutive pregnancy losses before 20-week' gestation. Women with RPL are routinely screened for etiological factors, but routine screening of male partners is not currently recommended. Recently it has been suggested that sperm quality is reduced in male partners of women with RPL, but the reasons underlying this lower quality are unclear. We hypothesized that these men may have underlying impairments of reproductive endocrine and metabolic function that cause reductions in sperm quality. METHODS After ethical approval, reproductive parameters were compared between healthy controls and male partners of women with RPL. Semen reactive oxygen species (ROS) were measured with a validated inhouse chemiluminescent assay. DNA fragmentation was measured with the validated Halosperm method. RESULTS Total sperm motility, progressive sperm motility, and normal morphology were all reduced in the RPL group vs controls. Mean ±SE morning serum testosterone (nmol/L) was 15% lower in RPL than in controls (controls, 19.0 ± 1.0; RPL, 16.0 ± 0.8; P < 0.05). Mean ±SE serum estradiol (pmol/L) was 16% lower in RPL than in controls (controls, 103.1 ± 5.7; RPL, 86.5 ± 3.4; P < 0.01). Serum luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone were similar between groups. Mean ±SE ROS (RLU/sec/106 sperm) were 4-fold higher in RPL than in controls (controls, 2.0 ± 0.6; RPL, 9.1 ± 4.1; P < 0.01). Mean ±SE sperm DNA fragmentation (%) was 2-fold higher in RPL than in controls (controls, 7.3 ± 1.0; RPL, 16.4 ± 1.5; P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that male partners of women with RPL have impaired reproductive endocrine function, increased levels of semen ROS, and sperm DNA fragmentation. Routine reproductive assessment of the male partners may be beneficial in RPL.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".