High sperm DNA fragmentation

[Orla9298]

We had the sperm fragmentation test a couple of weeks ago, as I had a gut feeling sometime was amiss as all but one of our 7 embryos have been very poor and fragment/stop at day 3. And the two 5 week miscarriages.

We got the results yesterday over a phone consultation and are waiting to hear the final action plan after our consultant has spoken to the right specialists, but as I had suspected we have a sperm issue too. I can’t really remember or understand the results properly but I think he said that you expect to see <1% with very high dna damage and we have 6% and the one I struggle to remember more is something like they like to see 90%+ with no or minor damage but we are only at 80%. The values are what he said but the description I’m not so sure.

He thinks the answer will be icsi or picsi. I know what they all are but was wondering if anyone has done picsi or dealt with high dna damage?

Xx

[Tugsgirl]

We haven’t but it has been mentioned to us a couple of times that if this were an issue they would have recommend taking an antioxidant such as wellman conception for men, for at least three months. OH already takes it anyway xx

[Orla9298 in reply to Tugsgirl]

Yeah Jon already takes everything that you can take for that, everything from the conception mix but in higher doses so it’s pretty gutting we can’t add supplements to help.

[Tugsgirl in reply to Orla9298]

Sorry to hear that. I hope you’ll get some answers and suggestions soon 🤞 xx

[Lizzielizzielizzie]

😢

But hopefully icsi will help x

[Kyell2]

It’s all such a struggle understanding all the results isn’t it. When my OH initially got his genetic tests they sent us lots of stats like this and we spent hrs googling and driving ourselves mad.

I have no advice other than to say that we were told that as long as they found sperm (we didn’t) that ICSI would sort out the genetic issues because they can do wonders nowadays.

I hope you get answers of some sort soon xx

[Hidden]

I’m not sure how our numbers correlate to yours but we were told that anything over 25% was bad and my husband was at 55% so our consultant thought that this was our primary issue rather than my age as we had originally thought.

We were advised absolutely zero alcohol for 90 days ahead of treatment. We were also told that wellman wasn’t sufficient and to use proxeed or fertilix for 90 days.

On top of that we tried PICSI and IMSI.

I’m sorry to say I can’t tell you whether any of that made a difference though as both of the following cycles still ended in heavily fragmented poor quality embryos and negative results. We’re back for a review with our consultant in a couple of weeks to see whether he has any insight in case we do decide to keep going with donor eggs.

Not sure if that’s helpful or lot given our outcome but thought I’d let you know what we’d been told.

All the very best of luck. Xx

[Orla9298 in reply to Hidden]

Yeah I don’t fully understand the numbers til we get to see him properly really but they are bad enough to suggest picsi so mustn’t be great. I’ve read about fertilix but he literally takes all the ingredients as individual supplements as we did lots of research. Maybe we should just buy it anyway! I’m thinking there’s not a lot left to do other than stop all alcohol which I don’t think he would do. We have both cut down a lot to pretty modest amounts but haven’t gone tee total. It’s hard isn’t it as we have been doing ivf for over a year and my hubby gets really wound up and stressed out if he is told he can’t drink. It’s not the fact of not being able to drink as he probably only drinks 1 day a week, it’s just he can’t bear the though of taking away every little pleasure like going to see a band on a Sunday with a few beers. It puts him off going through ivf which I also don’t want to do!x

[Hidden]

I am sorry to hear this we have had 3 failed rounds of icsi. We have just gone to a new clinic for an opening evening and they have suggested this test. We have booked it for may x

[Orla9298 in reply to Hidden]

Good luck with the results, I’ll update on here when we know their final advice. X

[ClarabGlasgow]

Sorry to hear you have had these results but knowledge is power and this helps explain a lot hopefully. Your new clinic sounds very thorough. Good you still have 2 more of your natural modified cycles to go, hopefully means they can fertilise those eggs with the best sperm to make your baby . Good luck xx

[Amy1974]

Hello,

My husband's DNA fragmentation test came at 30% which is quite high and explains our three miscarriages and 'no bonding' in our latest ivf attempt. We were advised magnetic sperm sorting prior to ICSI, this is a procedures that sorts DNA fragmented sperm from healthy ones. Should increase success rate providing the egg is healthy as well.

[Jen999999]

He's not taking enough supplements, lypophasic vitamin C, true niagen, zinc, vitamin e, l-glutathione, methyl folate, milk thistle, acai, N-Acetyl-l-cysteine, aceytl-l-carnitine, super-r lipoic acid, reservatol, melatonin, coq10 and selenium.

My hubby also starting taking 150 of follistim every other day. This increases the amount of sperm he's producing so it reduces the percentage of damaged dna.