Male infertility research explores causality

This article is part of the State of Urology 2013

New research on potential causes of male infertility hold key messages for urologists at this year’s AUA annual meeting, according to Craig S. Niederberger, MD, of the University of Illinois, Chicago.

“A number of papers discuss the use of exogenous testosterone in the male causing infertility and how systemic disease such as the metabolic syndrome and cancer can be associated with male infertility. Both are really cautionary but important tales,” Dr. Niederberger said.

In the area of treatment, a must-see paper will discuss the use of stem cell transplantation potentially to treat male infertility. Abstracts about how age does not affect micro-TESE outcomes and how high DNA fragmentation in sperm as measured by the TUNEL assay may be treated by micro-TESE are also important and interesting, he said.

Here are those abstracts and others that Dr. Niederberger tagged as top abstracts from this year’s meeting:

1884: Characterization of In Vitro propagated Human Spermatogonial Stem Cells (SSCs) prior to autotransplantation

Hooman Sadri-Ardekani

1891: The impact of fresh versus frozen testicular sperm upon intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) pregnancy outcomes in men with nonobstructive azoospermia (NOA): a meta analysis

Samuel Ohlander

2287: Prevalence and clinical meaning of metabolic syndrome in European Caucasian men presenting for primary couple’s infertility

Andrea Salonia

2289: Increased risk of cancer among azoospermic men

Michael Eisenberg

2291: Testosterone Prescribing Patterns in the Male Infertility Population

Mary Samplaski