How might DNA fragmentation affect treatment?

[zbexbj]

My partner (32M) and I (32F) have just had our funding approved for IVF. His morphology has been low on all tests, although came back borderline normal on the most recent one at 4%. Everything else has always come back normal for both of us.

The consultant recommended that he has a DNA fragmentation test before we start treatment so we’re taking that advice. We’ve then booked in all the pre-treatment appointments (bloods, baseline scan, consent) and have a provisional start date in March. However, when we booked those in, the admin team said that we may have to cancel ‘if the DNA fragmentation test shows anything up.’ They didn’t give any more information on that. As an over thinker who deals badly with uncertainty, I’m struggling a bit with that 🤣

I wondered whether anyone has been in this situation? How might test results derail treatment? Could they retract funding if DNA frag is high? Any info or stories much appreciated!

[soccerkt6]

Hi lovely, high DNA frag definitely wouldn't cause your funding to be retracted. And I've never heard of it causing a clinic to cancel or even delay a round. Normally it just means they'll process the sperm a bit differently (e.g. using picsi, imsi or macs instead of icsi or conventional ivf). Can you follow up with the clinic to ask what they meant?

That being said, if your partner's sperm does come back with high DNA frag, I would strongly consider delaying your round until you can do some more investigation and see if it can be improved. My husband also had low morphology and high DNA frag (all other semen parameters were above average) and we went through three failed fresh cycles before he was able to figure out what was causing the high frag (turns out it was a varicocele) and had it fixed. We conceived naturally a few months after that...this was after almost 5 years of ttc.

I know every couple is different but at least in our case, the different sperm processing techniques did nothing to improve our ivf outcomes. We had conventional ivf in our first cycle, pimsi (picsi + imsi) in our second, and zymot in our third, and in each round we only ended up with one or two very low-quality blastocysts despite having great egg numbers; the DNA frag was just too much of a hurdle. This is why I suggest trying to resolve the dna frag before using up your funding.

Good luck! xx

[zbexbj in reply to soccerkt6]

Thanks for your response and congratulations on conceiving naturally, although sounds like you went through a lot to get there ❤️

He’s already had an ultrasound for a varicocele and doesn’t have one so we’ve looked at that. But you’re right, it would definitely be better to delay if results made it that successful treatment was unlikely. I’ll give them a call and then try my best to put it out of my mind until results come back.

Thanks again so much!

[soccerkt6 in reply to zbexbj]

Thanks lovely. 💛

Glad your partner has already been checked for varicoceles, at least that’s one thing ticked off the list. There can still be other causes of high frag like latent infections in the urinary tract or hormonal imbalances but, as you say, put it out of your mind for now and you can cross that bridge if/when you come to it. xx