The relationship between paternal age, sex ratios, and aneuploidy frequencies in human sperm, as assessed by multicolor FISH

Journal Article · Fri Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 1995 · American Journal of Human Genetics

OSTI ID:186210

Martin, R H; Spriggs, E ^[1]; Ko, E ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Calgary, Alberta (Canada)
2. Alberta Children`s Hospital, Calgary, Alberta (Canada); and others

We studied the frequencies of X- and Y-chromosome bearing sperm, diploidy and disomy for chromosomes 1, 12, X, and Y in sperm from 10 normal men aged 21 - 52 years, to determine whether there was any relationship between donor age and any of these variables. Multicolor FISH was used to control for lack of probe hybridization and to distinguish diploid sperm from disomic sperm. A minimum of 10,000 sperm per donor was evaluated for each chromosome, for a total of 225,846 sperm studied. Sperm were considered disomic if two fluorescent signals were separated by a minimal distance of one signal domain. The mean frequencies of X- and Y-bearing sperm were 50.1% and 49.0%, respectively; not significantly different from 50%. There was no correlation between paternal age and {open_quotes}sex ratio {close_quotes} in sperm. Similarly, there was no association between the frequency of diploid sperm (mean, .16%; range, .06%-.42%) and donor age. For disomy frequencies, there was no relationship between donor age and disomy 12 (mean, .16%; range, .10%-.25%), XX (mean, .07%; range, .03%-.17%), and XY sperm (mean, .16%; range, .08%-.24%). There was a significant increase in the frequency of YY sperm (P = .04; mean, .18%; range, .10%-.43%) and disomy 1 sperm (P = .01; mean, .11%; range, .05%-.18%) with donor age. In summary, our results do not support a correlation between paternal age and sex ratio or diploidy. A relationship between paternal age and disomy was observed for disomy 1 and YY sperm but not for disomy 12, XX or XY sperm. 37 refs., 3 tabs.

• OSTI ID: 186210
• Journal Information: American Journal of Human Genetics, Journal Name: American Journal of Human Genetics Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 57; ISSN AJHGAG; ISSN 0002-9297
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

55 BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
BASIC STUDIES
AGE DEPENDENCE
ANEUPLOIDY
CHROMOSOMAL ABERRATIONS
DIPLOIDY
DNA HYBRIDIZATION
FLUORESCENCE
HETEROCHROMOSOMES
HUMAN CHROMOSOMES
MUTATION FREQUENCY
PROBES
SEX DEPENDENCE
SPERMATOZOA
STATISTICS