Hey,
I have a question around male fertility. My husband has just received blood results with low Testosterone rating. Does anyone know if this can affect male fertility / sperm count etc ?
He will be speaking to GP about this, but the tests he done were private ones which you can buy on line ( kinda glad he did tbh!)
Thanks in advance 😊
hi, yes my partner has low tostesterone, low sperm concentration/count, slight morphology and motility issuu, we had to do icsi
hey
Did drs do anything for the low testosterone which in turn helped the sperm?
The NHS IVF clinic did a thorough examination including X-ray and said he has bilateral varicocele. They prescribed him Clomid(Clomiphene) 25mg daily and his testosterone increased and sperm count also but he only took the therapy for 4-5 months and we did Icsi-unsuccessful 2 times. No embryos survived to day 5. But I am pushing my husband to see another urologyst now for even better investigation and hopefully therapy.
have you had the sperm DNA fragmentation tested? My husband had his severe varicocele embolised (privately) which helped a lot and we have a son via ICSI and due with his brother in December x
Hi, thank you for your reply. No DNA fragmentation test, the NHS clinic said there was no point as it will not show anything, apart from that he may need antioxidants which he can take even now.
How did the DNA fragmentation test help you?
I will be interested in the embolision so will PM you 
Hm antioxidants are not the only thing that helps with DNA fragmentation, heat plays a big factor which is why the varicocele is important. My husband managed to reduce his DNA fragmentation significantly after the embolisation which gave us a better chance of success with ICSI - we actually did IMSI on the recommendation of our private urologist. I do agree with the NHS that your husband should start taking supplements now though, there is no downside to that but the right ones because too many antioxidants can actually be a bad thing. I recommend Impryl x
What supplements did your husband take that helped ? Sorry but what is Varicocele?
my husband took Proxeed for 3 months and his semen result became worse and the NHS clinic said to stop it and prescribed him the Clomiphene which helped a bit but not massively. Maybe if he continued for a linger time or took different medicines lice Letrozole or FSH injections which are alao used for women during stimulation, probably he would have improved even more.
Varicoceles are the veins that cause more heat in the testicles that damage the semen quality/quantity.
Yes I completely agree based on research I did is that heat is causing the damage to the sperm. Hence we will also look at embolision option too. But wondered what the point is of the DNA fragmentation test 🤔
Great you did IMSI, we did normal ICSI and had no success with the embryos growing to day 5 and we now regret it to be honest. So you’ve done the right thing!
Our first ICSI cycle we got only 1 blastocyst on Day 5 which I miscarried (that cycle we got 8 eggs, 7 mature and fertilised, 1 5AA blastocyst). Our IMSI cycle all of our embryos made it to Day 5 and all but one were good/high quality (8 eggs, 4 mature, all fertilised and all 4 made it to day 5 blastocysts 5AA, 5AB, 3BB and 4CC) so for us it made a pretty dramatic difference.
wiw that’s amazing result! I had 8 folicles, 5 eggs, 4 injected, 3 fertilised, 2 developed to day 3 when they were top quality 8 cells embryo and none of them made it to bladtocyst 
so I suspect it is the male factor. If we did IMSI, it would have probably helped overcome the male factor. But interestingly we checked the HEFA and it is red, so hence we decided not to - big mistake that will cost us £8k.
It does sound likely to be male factor, we always had perfect grading at day 3 too before they'd drop off. I think with IMSI it's probably the case that there isn't enough evidence yet and also that the benefit is specific to certain situations like ours so overall HEFA can't recommend it but I trusted our urologists recommendation to do it based on his understanding of the most recent studies. Unfortunately it takes time for a body of evidence to be built and infertility (especially focus on male side) is very much still quite 'new' as historically the focus has been so much on the female.
Thats interesting as my consultant said about 4 of my other embryos “dropped off” at day 3/4 and were looking good.
We didn’t think it was to do with the spermicide as we’re told they pick “the best sperm” for ICSI as that’s what we had done ! But maybe the sperm does play a part on that too?
I understand from research that with ICSI they can’t see the fragmentations on the sperm but with IMSI they can 🤔 and pick non-fragmented sperm. We will try to fix sperm but in the meantime try anotger IMSI cycle as I am 40 and can’t wait for 6-12 months to see effect of his treatment.
With ICSI or IMSI they can’t be guaranteed they are picking sperm without fragmentation as it’s not visible but with IMSI the resolution of the microscope is much higher and each individual sperm gets graded (like embryos do) based on its appearance and whether it has any vacuoles etc so it’s more likely they will pick healthy sperm. ICSI overcomes issues with how much sperm there is but not necessarily the quality of that sperm. A healthy lifestyle avoiding heat near the testicles (loose boxers, no cycling, no saunas etc), avoiding alcohol and caffeine and taking supplements can all help improve sperm quality.
We started on Impryl this time, hope it will reduce the DNA fragmentation which we haven’t tested yet but I am sure it will be high. Thanks for the suggestion for Impryl.
Hi, My husband has low testosterone (which he have recently found is because he has Klinefelter Syndrome) and even before the diagnosis we were told that testosterone treatment would not increase his fertility.
His sperm count is very low but that and the low testosterone has now been put down to the Klinefelter so I wouldn’t be able to say for certain that low testosterone causes low sperm count/mobility.
X
my husband had a low testosterone and diagnose with Oligospermia and I must admit his counts and testosterone improved after being on Clomiphene for 4-5 months. It does work, worth checking for a possible treatment.
hey
Thanks for replying and letting me know. That’s good to know it was treatable and that it improved with medication!
He has blood tests for it tomorrow with GP so we will see what they say and go from there 🙏🏽
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