Older women who want children are better off with younger men

Fabrizzio Horta

Monash University research reveals older women may have a better chance of a successful pregnancy with a younger partner.

Andrologist, Clinical Embryologist and Monash University PhD candidate Fabrizzio Horta is investigating the significance of sperm with DNA damage, and how DNA repair is affected by female age. 

“Many reproductive studies examine the woman’s oocytes—more commonly known as eggs,” Fabrizzio said.

“After fertilisation of the egg by a sperm and before an embryo is totally formed, the oocytes have the capacity to repair the DNA damage coming from either maternal or paternal origin.”

“It’s thought that this capacity decreases with age, however we don't currently have a way to measure it, especially in IVF treatments.”

Fabrizzio said this could be significantly important in infertility cases of unknown cause or when the male partner has sperm with DNA damage.

“In our study we were able to recreate experimentally controlled DNA damage in sperm cells and predict the potential effect of female age in IVF cycles,” Fabrizzio said.

“Our results indicate that the capacity to repair DNA damage in sperm diminishes as female age increases.”

“Interestingly, we have also identified some particular genes involved in modulating this egg capacity and how they change with age.”

The study shows that as women age, the results in IVF treatments could be significantly affected by their male partner if their sperm cells had DNA damage.

“There are several factors associated with sperm DNA damage such as varicocele, smoking, stress, use of drugs, and most importantly male age—especially in men over 45 years old,” Fabrizzio said.

“The take-home message is that women wanting children when they are older have a better chance with healthier and/or younger men!” 

Fabrizzio will present his research into the effect of sperm DNA damage on fertility outcomes at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Barcelona next month.

Fabrizzio has had two abstracts accepted at the leading scientific meeting, one of which as an oral presentation.  He was also recently awarded “Best free communication presentation” at the Scientists In Reproductive Technology (SIRT) conference last month, worth $2000 to cover conference traveling expenses.

Fabrizzio acknowledges his supervisors Associate Professor Peter Temple-Smith, Dr Sally Catt and Professor Beverley Vollenhoven for their tremendous support, as well as Dr Selva Ramasubramanian and Dr Christian Nefzger for their help in genetic analyses and Dr Prabhakar Ramachandran and the radiotherapy staff at Moorabin hospital for their help in the radiation experiments.