Telomere homeostasis is compromised in spermatocytes from patients with idiopathic infertility

A single-cell assay for telomere DNA content shows increasing telomere length heterogeneity, as well as increasing mean telomere length in human spermatozoa with advancing age

“…Telomere length in sperm has been shown to increase with the age of the man [13][14][15][16], and our results add to the mounting evidence that this effect is robust and reproducible. The age-related increase in STL has been attributed to the continued effects of telomerase, but the magnitude of the increase in Another mechanism of telomere length expansion, ALT, can produce large increments in TL in relatively few cell cycles.…”

“…Mice engineered to have short telomeres also display abnormal early embryo development [2]. Also, the importance of telomere homeostasis in fertility was recently demonstrated in mammalian germ cells [12,13], where authors showed that telomere structure and homeostasis is compromised in spermatocytes from patients with idiopathic infertility [13].…”

Shorter leukocyte telomere length is associated with risk of nonobstructive azoospermia

“…Recently, increasing numbers of studies have focused on the role of telomeres in reproduction (13,(42)(43). For example, in mice, telomere structure and length play a key role in chromosomal homologous recombination during meiosis I; shorter telomeres lead to segregation errors of homologous chromosomes and spermatocyte apoptosis, finally resulting in reduced sperm counts and subfertility (13).…”

An Association Study between Longitudinal Changes of Leukocyte Telomere and the Risk of Azoospermia in a Population of Iranian Infertile Men

“…Another study has found that the exposure to anticancer drugs may have a function in male infertility through the induction of telomere dysfunction [30] . Although there are numerous reports about relationship between male infertility and STL [8,31,32] , the correlation between azoospermia and leukocyte telomere length (LTL) has not been examined yet. A previous study has shown that the LTL is significantly correlated with SLT [27] .…”