Hum. Reprod. Advance Access originally published online on May 3, 2007
Human Reproduction 2007 22(7):2072-2073; doi:10.1093/humrep/dem094
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Letters to the Editor |
Reply: Sperm forward motion and aging
1 Biosciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA 2 School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA 3 Genetics and Developmental Biology Program, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA
6 Correspondence address. E-mail: ajwyrobek{at}lbl.gov
We congratulate Pasqualotto et al. (2005)
for their fine study of the effects of male age on semen quality including human sperm kinematics endpoints as obtained by computer- assisted sperm analysis (CASA). We regret that our search of the Pubmed database using the key words ‘CASA’ or ‘computer-assisted sperm analyzer’, ‘sperm’ and ‘human’ did not identify, and still does not today, their manuscript, perhaps because these terms were not included in their title, abstract or as key words in their paper.
Most importantly, both of our studies demonstrated declines in sperm motility with male age. However, there were substantial differences in both in study design and findings for specific sperm endpoints. We found an effect of male age on the sperm kinematics parameters of linearity, velocity straight line and velocity average path (Sloter et al., 2006), while their study did not. This discrepancy may be explained by measurements of larger proportions of men in the higher age groups in our study. We recruited men into each age decade from 
20 to 80 y of age with equal emphasis on men in the higher age groups. The Pasqualotto study included only one man over the age of 60, while our study included nearly 20 men over the age of 60. Another important difference between our two studies is that our findings are based on a generally healthy worker population while their findings are based on clinical setting population.
Footnotes
4 Present address: Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology, WIL Research Laboratories, Ashland, OH, USA. 
5 Present address: Life Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
References
Pasqualotto FF, Sobreiro BP, Hallak J, Pasqualotto EB, Lucon AM. Sperm concentration and normal sperm morphology decrease and follicle-stimulating hormone level increases with age. BJU Int (2005) 96:1087–1091.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]
Sloter E, Schmid TE, Marchetti F, Eskenazi B, Nath J, Wyrobek AJ. Quantitative effects of male age on sperm motion. Hum Reprod (2006) 21:2868–2875.
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