Stories with borderline dna fragmentation

[Itisajourney]

hi all! Can you pls share your experiences ? Were you abble to conceive beeing late 30s-40s and your partner having high but borderline dna fragmentation? And from all the sperm having 30% unhealthy sperm? Thanks

[JA-fnuk Partner Nurse Fertility Network UK]

Hope you get some replies to your post Meantime ask your clinic if they can recommend any supplements that might benefit your partner such as Proxeed Plus or Impryl Or Vitamins that contain zinc or selenium [ can also be found in walnuts & almonds ] Vitamin D is important in sperm health Make sure your partner is as fit as possible - good healthy colourful diet [ green leafy veg fruit apples etc ] Does not exercise to excess - not taking protein drinks or shakes Should not be smoking/vaping also no alcohol No tight pants / trousers /hot baths as it is important to keep the testes cooler than the rest of the body

Thinking of you

Janet-Partner

[Newbeginnings24]

hi there, my husband had a similar situation. His regular tests all looked good so we didn’t check the fragmentation until after 2 failed IVF rounds. Once we saw those results, similar to yours, he did a few things differently in the 3 months before the next round:

-impryl and fish oil

- 1 day abstinence only before giving the sample so there is less time for fragmentation

- icsi instead of regular IVF

- reduce biking and alcohol to 2-3 drinks per week (it was already relatively low) and cut out caffeine totally

He could have looked into varicocele but we didn’t have enough time. On my side kept most things the same but added levothyroxine and acupuncture.

Even with all the changes we had 3 out of 5 eggs fertilize. My egg #s were always low despite high stims and all the lifestyle things so we had to try everything to get a good quality embryo. Transferred these 3 at day 3 and currently 19wks pregnant, age 40. We don’t know if any of this made the difference but it was worth to it to try and not painful for him. I always wonder if we had checked the fragmentation earlier it would have helped but will never know. Best of luck to you both! x

[Itisajourney in reply to Newbeginnings24]

Thank you for your inspiring story. Have you measured DNA frag afterwards? We have already done an IVF, after he did similar changes and we got unsuccessful, but now he has done varicocele and the numbers slightly improved. Could I ask if you know the numbers of your partner around total sperm unhealthy? When they test for DNA fragmentation they also test for that. thanks!

[Itisajourney in reply to Itisajourney]

I am just deciding if next cycle I should use a donor or not.

[Newbeginnings24 in reply to Itisajourney]

His average DNA fragmentation was 36%, the healthy sperm was 34%, and unhealthy was 5% according to the Exact test. We didn’t test again so don’t have anything to compare it to unfortunately. I found all this difficult to interpret and the doctor didn’t go into detail explaination, just recommended those changes for the 3rd round.

This whole process is so so hard. Thinking of you and really hope it works out!

[Itisajourney in reply to Newbeginnings24]

Did you follow long or short protocol?

[Newbeginnings24 in reply to Itisajourney]

In the first (unsuccessful) cycle where I only got one egg I did short protocol and then switched to long protocol for second and third cycle

[raverg]

My husband has a pretty big varicocele and neither our consultant, nor the fertility urologist bothered to test DNA fragmentation because they said the varicocele affects it for sure and the treatment is the same. The urologist recommended a varicocelectomy but couldn’t guarantee that it would fix any theoretical DNA fragmentation, and our IVF consultant said that the older I get, the quality of my eggs drops too (especially as it had been over 6 months since my previous IVF cycle, then there would be another 6 months recovery for varicocelectomy), so we decided to give it another go with ICSI after making some lifestyle changes for 3 months and for us it worked.

From our experience, supplements and diet and fresher sperm can definitely help. We only tested sperm parameters before & after and just making lifestyle changes improved my husband’s count drastically, and lifted progressives and morphology, and I suppose DNA frag too in theory.

The only recommendations that my husband’s fertility urologist gave was to take something like Proxeed (but my husband was on Proceive Max and we stuck with that) and to ejaculate on alternative days for a week before the sperm collection, leaving one day break right before the collection day. The fresher it is, the better.

On top of that, we both went on a Mediterranean diet with lots of veggies and fruit and nuts & seeds, and cut junk food and UPF’s, alcohol, reduced carbs and sugar. We tried to reduce plastic use (especially microwaving them or putting them in the dishwasher, or storing acidic foods in it), reduced tinned food with acidic foods in it (tomato; switched to bottled pasatta) and I used the ewg skin deep database to make sure we’re not using any cosmetics that might be detrimental. We also worked out, but my husband skipped it the week before the sperm collection and for the whole 3 months he’d been more mindful about getting over heated, avoided baths, heated seats, wore loose underwear. He even iced with Snowballs once a day for 2 months, but he was in pain due to his varicocele so it helped with that in addition to bringing the temperature down.

Jonathan Ramsay is a pretty famous fertility urologist in London and he works with a nutritionist Melanie Brown who has diet suggestions for male fertility (so you could also get their opinion too), so after reading her blog posts, my husband started having blueberries every day and we basically tried to put tomato concentrate in most meals in a week (lycopene is apparently what helps).

On my side, I just did weekly acupuncture on top of better diet, working out and Proceive Max. Though I did a vaginal microbiome test right before the cycle and discovered I had gardnerella so I had to take antibiotics for that, plus lots of oral and vaginal probiotics, and increased my vit c to 500 mg a day and zinc to 25 my a day to increase immunity.

Hopefully this helps and the very best of luck!

[Itisajourney in reply to raverg]

Thank you! Very useful tips! Thanks. Can I ask you how old are you and if you use long or short protocol?

[raverg in reply to Itisajourney]

Both my husband and I were 36 when we did this cycle, and I was on the short protocol. But we used a lot of info from the first cycle. I did short cycle with Menopur the first time round, but the second time they added Gonal F too, and since it was private, I was monitored closely and the dosage adjusted two times. I suspect that the protocol change plus our prep in the run up to it lead to 8 eggs retrieved (more than the first round, even though my AMH had halved since the first round) and 4 fertilised (ICSI). While in the first cycle we had two average day 5 embryos that didn’t stick, in the second after all the prep and protocol change we had one high quality day 5 embryo that did (but we lost 3 after day 3, a marker that sperm was still the issue, probably DNA fragmentation, but we elevated it enough with the prep to at least get 1 good sperm and we had enough mature eggs to try more times). It’s sadly all a numbers game and even marginal improvements can make a difference. Best of luck!