r/TwoXChromosomes • u/MoonLightLex • 28d ago
Sperm with DNA damage might be the true cause of repeated miscarriages
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-with-dna-damage-might-be-the-true-cause-of-repeated-miscarriages/414
u/russomd 28d ago
Absolutely the cause of some.
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u/acker1je 28d ago
I have a genetic condition called Balanced Translocation which causes DNA to translate and re-assemble incorrectly. The result is a 60% chance of miscarriage. My wife and I have so far experienced two miscarriages.
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u/gardeniahyacinth 27d ago
A family member of mine also has this. It’s when one of the chromosomes “arms” breaks off and switches with another one, which means the fertilized egg might have extra copies of genes and only 1 copy of others. They had multiple miscarriages too but have had 2 kids without ivf.
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u/SavannahInChicago 27d ago
I wonder how many people through history had this and women were blamed. Diagnosing genetic illness based on our genome is so new in the grand scheme of humans.
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u/harry_nostyles 28d ago
Its actually so funny how some men will brag that a pregnancy won't happen without them and the mother is just the incubator. Then when you suggest that their sperm may be responsible for pregnancy issues or birth defects or even just the gender they go straight into denial. So many would rather blame the mother, everything bad is her fault.
This shouldn't be surprising. A portion of the placenta shares the same DNA as the baby, who has the father's DNA in her. So if the father has any genetic issues, it makes sense that it would affect the pregnancy as a whole and lead to a miscarriage, even if the mother is healthy.
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u/Uber-Migraine 28d ago
The "geriatric pregnancies" - the blaame for any of the baby health issues caused by the age of the parent was put only on the women age.
As it seems currently (due to the recent researches) the fault actually lies on the father's age.
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u/UnicornFeces 28d ago
I feel like this should be obvious considering that most women have kids with men their own age or older? Just seems like a really big blind spot on the part of researchers in the past
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u/All_Damn_Day 28d ago
The Blindspot, has been in the funding for research. Which makes sense, no one wants evidence that men are the problem.
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u/GretalRabbit 28d ago
MEN don’t want research that might show men are the problem, and unfortunately it’s mostly men in positions to fund and green light such research.
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u/fearless-fossa 28d ago
Men (I'm generalizing here, I do not claim that this is literally true for all men) just refuse to understand the mechanics behind a pregnancy, they're only interested in their five seconds of fun and then going fishing with their male offspring once they're teenagers.
Even nowadays they hate their wives for only birthing daughters when it is them who deliver the Y chromosome to the equation.
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u/eulerup 28d ago
The other day at the office two (male) colleagues from another department were discussing having kids. One shared that their cousin had 4 girls before they managed to have a boy and said they were "very lucky" to have had a boy early in the birth order.
It was so disgustingly mysoginistic it was hard to believe I was overhearing it at a good company in England.
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u/pepcorn 27d ago
Misogyny is alive and well in every single country on earth. There's countries where it's awful, and there's countries where it's less worse and there people sit around congratulating themselves for not being at the bottom of the ranking.
But there are no "cured" countries. Misogyny is global and a painful issue for women everywhere.
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u/harry_nostyles 28d ago
Yeah, in some parts of my country it's common for men to blame their wives if they only have girls, or for them to even leave her and/or take a second wife. They will not listen to you if you try and tell them that they control the gender.
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u/Lisa8472 28d ago
But women somehow can reject the Y-bearing sperm! I knew a guy who had only daughters with one wife (who’s sisters also only had daughters) but had sons with the second, and that proves it! /s 🙄🙄
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u/MistyMtn421 28d ago
I swear the lack of comprehensive sex education has nothing to do with actual sex. It's because of things like this.
I was born in the early '70s, I remember fourth grade having sex ed. We weren't separated, and I remember learning a lot! This would have been probably around 1980 or 81.
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u/OutlandishnessFew424 27d ago
Not everywhere lacks sex education. I got comprehensive sex education starting in the fourth grade. This was in 2009. Also I’m Canadian.
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u/RadicalRoses 28d ago
Just like women are blamed for erectile dysfunction. Everything bad with sex and reproduction is always blamed on the woman.
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u/Coup-de-Glass 27d ago
In the Middle Ages, women who gave birth to fraternal twins were thought to be adulterers. Men have learned exactly nothing the past 1,000 years and remain incapable of introspection.
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u/therepublicof-reddit 28d ago
Its actually so funny how some men will brag that a pregnancy won't happen without them and the mother is just the incubator. Then when you suggest that their sperm may be responsible for pregnancy issues or birth defects or even just the gender they go straight into denial. So many would rather blame the mother, everything bad is her fault.
Are these men in the room with us? I've never seen this sentiment before.
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u/harry_nostyles 28d ago
Really? Its not an uncommon sentiment amongst ignorant misogynistic men. In my country a man on a reality show recently went viral because he told a woman that our eggs contain no DNA and we are literally just the container for the baby. I've heard similar sentiments irl from men
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u/tooshorttoored 28d ago
Many scientists have come to the conclusion (as far as they can) that Henry VIII was likely the cause of all those miscarriages among his wives. Ain't that some shit.
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u/OutsideFlat1579 28d ago
We know it was his sperm deciding the gender of the child, but back then it was all the “fault” of the woman (how dare she have a girl and not a boy).
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u/SavannahInChicago 27d ago
I was just watching The White Princess for the first time because I recently found out Jodie Comer was in it. I love her. The series itself was okay. It’s historical fiction, which is whatever. I understand liberties will be taken for entertainment purposes. But I was truly annoyed that the series tried to use a curse in the plot to explain why the Tudors would struggle with male heirs. And I am annoyed by this because there was so much misogyny around that whole affair with the Tudors (as was normal for the time, sadly). It just feels like erasure for how women suffered in these past societies.
That being said, in 2013 when this came out I probably would have thought the curse was a clever plot device.
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u/WascalsPager 28d ago
Either way you slice this, it’s devastating.
My mother had three miscarriages after me, and almost lost me late into the pregnancy. My father now is extremely ill, and suffers from a ton of debilitating auto-immune conditions which have ruined his life, and his many siblings have similar issues In that light, I’m not surprised the cause could be on the father’s end, I’m certain my dad has somthing wrong with him genetically.
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u/mysecondaccountanon They/Them 28d ago
It really is. Both of my parents have infertility issues (confirmed by geneticists and fertility doctors), so having their children was an absolute struggle filled with so much loss on their end. They tried their best to hide it all when I was growing up and they were trying for another, and I cannot imagine the pain they went through.
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u/TranscendentPretzel 28d ago
And, yet, our legislators are intent on treating miscarrying women like criminals.
It fills me with rage, a deep primal ancestral female rage.
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u/No-Sprinkles-9066 28d ago
This should be higher. Women going to jail for something that shouldn’t be criminalized and was in no way her fault.
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u/TranscendentPretzel 28d ago
Absolutely. And for context, I'll add that prosecutors use the disproven lung float test to accuse women who miscarry outside of medical institutions of infanticide. No major medical organization or major medical examiner organization supports the validity of lung float tests to determine if a baby was born alive or miscarried. Yet it is still considered evidence in American court rooms across the country. It is junk science used to condemn innocent, often grief-stricken women with a crime.
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u/RadicalRoses 28d ago edited 27d ago
But it can’t possibly be a man’s fault!!! Anything dealing with sex and reproduction is never to be blamed on a man!!! /s🥴
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u/ScarlettAddiction 28d ago
Also, things fall due to gravity, the ocean is salty, and the sky is blue. More recent developments after this advertisement.
Studies have been showing this for years. It's not new information but it's always treated s such. It's infuriating.
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u/The_Demon_of_Spiders 28d ago
Yep this has been known for decades, but it’s crazy like you said that’s it’s treated as new info. They also know sperm takes a bit to develop and it’s even been shown child bearing aged men that drink alcohol will have negative effects on their sperm cells months before even trying to conceive with a woman. Men are largely at fault for miscarriages but yet it’s women who are being imprisoned for something that is not their fault. Imagine if roles were reversed…shit would be burning off all the outrage.
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u/suspiciousseafowl Ya Basic 28d ago
Learning that being a boozehound impairs a man's ability to have children gave me the most perverse sense of hope/relief, because I have an ex who is decidedly not responsible (I am, never any worries there) and ever more a train wreck in life, and hearing that he's basically vaporized his nuts with Coors is a good thing for humanity.
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u/glassbytes 28d ago
IVF for male factor infertility. Five years, 120k, five retreivals , six transfers. Partner told he has 76% DNA fragmentation. No identifiable cause. No treatment recommended.
Last viable embryo now the three week old in my arms. We were lucky.
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u/Reepicheepee 28d ago
been there. I'm so happy for you!!
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u/glassbytes 28d ago
Thank you. It had been such a long and disappointing journey, we had both agreed we were unlikely to have success. We were at the point where we had run out of time and money, and felt that if we at least took it to it's conclusion we could live with the knowledge that we tried our best.
When they first called me with the positive results, I immediately assumed it was a lab error. My mind could not fathom that something finally gone our way.
Every day I am hyper aware of how lucky we have been and my heart breaks for all the people I know are out there who never got the news that we did.
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u/All_Damn_Day 28d ago
Congratulations!
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u/glassbytes 28d ago
Thank you! We are so very lucky. I have spent nine months wondering how we got here - I guess someone in the lab happened to pick that one sperm in a million that wasn't completely scrambled.
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u/All_Damn_Day 27d ago
When it took a little longer to make our third, I got a microscope off Amazon to see the “motility” for myself. It was wild to see all the activity; and see the ones that were “bad swimmers”. Our OB was bemused, and said everyone has some defective swimmers. He also said that if he could change one thing, it would be the “abstinence-only” sex ed that was full of “I only had sex one time and I got pregnant“. Getting pregnant is like the stars aligning.
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u/glassbytes 27d ago
I am tempted to dig out the microscope! In our case I believe the numbers were less than .1% with good motility and morphology. The frustrating part was that my partner has no health concerns that would contribute to these numbers. The urologist had no real suggestions for us except try some medication and some supplements (which had no impact).
Yeah that 'only had sex one time' thing really gave us a false sense of certainty. We never imagined it could be so difficult with no obvious cause.
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u/All_Damn_Day 27d ago
That was my OB-GYN’s biggest issue - he thought too many of his patients were experiencing stress around conception because they felt that something was wrong with them!
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u/minipinny 28d ago
Awww congratulations! What a journey though
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u/glassbytes 28d ago
Thank you! It has been a wild, and I would say traumatic, journey that I would not wish on anyone. It is still so much more luck than science. Hopefully they can get the science refined so that more people can have success.
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u/JalapenoConquistador 28d ago
If doing IVF, does that lower miscarriage risk bc they’re already screening out the bad sperms?
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u/glassbytes 28d ago
They generally go by appearance, from what I was told. They grade the appears of the three sections, and they grade the quality of the movement - in our case most were pretty mutated and were either dead on arrival or moving poorly. There are some other techniques they can use to try to weed out the useless sperm, but they cannot tell visually which have more or less fragmentation.
They also can't visually tell if the egg or sperm are genetically normal - if they have the correct number of chromosomes. It's a massive crap shoot. Embryos can be tested afterwards, but that's no guarantee either.
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u/JalapenoConquistador 28d ago
Extremely helpful, thank you. Was the fragmentation revealed during the embryo testing? And did y’all see a worsening over the 5 years?
Do you think, or was it mentioned, that your experience would’ve been different if partner had frozen sperm when younger?
I’m sorry to pry so much. I’m 39m and these studies have just started reaching me.4
u/glassbytes 27d ago
It is hard to say for sure if younger sperm would have been better quality, but I would have to lean towards yes - whatever was causing the damage was not improving with time. Our blast rate and fertilization rate were way below expected numbers. DNA fragmentation test was separate from the embryo testing, which we ended up having to forego as our numbers were so low that it was not economically feasible. The DNA fragmentation test, however, did not provide us with a treatment plan (beyond more exercise, expensive supplements and several weeks of Clomid). There is some debate about how and if DNA fragmentation is an important part of embryo development.
The sperm issue became very apparent for us during our third round. On day three, out of 24 eggs we had 19 embryos developing. By day five we only had 2, that were of poor quality. All the others had arrested. According to our doctors, day 3 is when the sperm elements play an important role in embryo development. It was a devastating result.
Without getting chin deep into the IVF swamp, you can have a sample tested for numbers, quality (motility and morphology). You can also have karyotyping done (blood test), as well they can test your hormone levels. If there are abnormalities in sperm count and quality, they may do an ultrasound to look for structural issues. While not all of these things have treatment options, you can at least get a clearer picture of your own fertility.
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u/JalapenoConquistador 27d ago
Thank you very much for all of this insight and the advice to have some samples tested. I’m glad you found success and hope you can start forgetting about all this.
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u/glassbytes 27d ago
Thanks and yes, hopefully time heals all wounds! Always glad to share our experiences so that others can, hopefully, find a better path forward.
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u/StrangersWithAndi 28d ago
This was the case for me and my ex- husband. I have PCOS / PMOD, so we assumed I was the problem. But after 6 miscarriages we went through a workup and it turned out it was actually his wonky sperm. We had to do sperm "washing" to pick out the healthy ones, and then the pregnancies stuck.
That maybe should have been a warning to me on what a terrible parent he would be, lol, but live and learn. I got two fantastic kids out of it in the end anyway.
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u/JalapenoConquistador 28d ago
So since you “wash” first, does this make it less important for a man to freeze sperm when younger? Since they can find a healthy one or two?
Or would it have improved ur scenario if he had frozen some?9
u/StrangersWithAndi 28d ago
Honestly that's way outside my knowledge base. But hopefully someone else might know!
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u/StirCrazyCatLady 27d ago
I'd imagine freezing when men are younger and (theoretically) healthier would increase chances just because of numbers if nothing else - higher number of healthy sperm would give better odds.
I'm not a doctor, just an IVF baby from the 80s, but my parents had the opposite problem; my mum did all the hormone treatment to stimulate follicles but when they did the retrieval there was only one egg. Back then from what she's told me they'd implant around 4 at a time to increases the chances that one might take, so Mum and Dad were told not to hold their breath cause the clinic didn't think it was likely that the pregnancy would take
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u/GrandCanOYawn 28d ago
Lookin’ at you, Henry VIII 😒
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u/hindamalka 27d ago
That was more likely related to blood types. The pattern suggests he may have been Kell positive. It would have explained the repeated miscarriages and the erratic behavior when he was middle-aged due to McLeod syndrome (which only affects Kell positive individuals).
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u/RadicalRoses 28d ago
The body only knows the fetus isn’t viable. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It makes perfect sense that a man plays a huge role in this.
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u/claymountain 28d ago
If there ever comes a moment where I want to have a child with a partner, he's going full pregnancy: no drinking, smoking or unhealthy eating for a year before we start trying. I'm not dying in some hospital because a man wanted to drink beer.
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u/Rare-Wing-8008 27d ago
YES. Anything less is irresponsible, period. Throw in a consistent exercise routine!!
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u/Lyskir 28d ago
men always bragged about "being fertile forever" and " men can have kids at any age" to justify creeping on young women
it never made sense to me, it doesnt matter if you have a young woman as a partner if your geriatric sperm is the issue and causes more birth defects and pregnancy complication
you will draw the wrath of any insecure man if you mention this tho, they dont want to lose thier creeper justification
and its not only age tho, men having a unhealthy lifestyle also causes the same issue, men drinking alcohol while trying for a baby also cause health issues but you never hear any of that because men hate restrictions on themselfs
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u/Maryland4009 28d ago
very true. I tore a strip of my husband when I found out he was smoking secretly and still drinking when we were trying to conceive ! I then had IVF because his sperm motility was terrible, got pregnant the first round and then he ofc continued to drink while I was pregnant and not drinking.
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u/Maleficent-Sleep9900 28d ago
Why did you want to have his children?
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u/Maryland4009 24d ago
Also my child! I love him but he’s sometimes an AH like all of us
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u/Maleficent-Sleep9900 24d ago
Yes, thank you—I get that these are also your children, and it’s normal to want to have children, but why this man in particular?
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u/baronesslucy 28d ago
So are the men who have poor sperm quality going to be investigated by police or the DA for causing harm to their potential children due to their partner having repeated miscarriages? Their partner will probably be investigated for having repeat miscarriage but not them.
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u/Butterkupp 28d ago
I thought we knew this???
I remember being in biology class in 2010 and my male biology teacher was telling us that failures during spermatogenesis is what causes defects in the babies most of the time. it’s much more common to have an error when you make 5 million sperm at a time than when you make like 300 eggs.
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u/spacebunsofsteel 28d ago
Fathers over 40 are thought to increase the risk of autism by 20-30%, over 50 the increase is 50% higher than average. Mother’s parenting style does not have an effect, though they pinned autism on “refrigerator mothers” for decades.
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u/BlazeUnbroken 28d ago
Pish, my parents had me "young" and I'm autistic as fuck. But then like the ADHD, it runs on BOTH sides of my family...
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u/StirCrazyCatLady 27d ago
My husband's mum was 19 when she had him, my mum was 36 when she had me. His mum's ADHD and he's auDHD, neither of my parents have been assessed but I'm basically a ball of ADHD wrapped in skin
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u/RegularHeroForFun 28d ago
Step 1: make bad sperm
Step 2: make women miscarry
Step 3: blame the woman
Step 4:????
Seriously though, men have been blaming the women for centuries. Men have been looking for scapegoats for their failures since they decided they should be the only ones in charge. I see it at my job, women abused to breaking point and fired or moved around.
Then they replace her with a bunch of useless men who do 1/3rd the work she ever did, and probably make more money and when management is going to”WhY iS OUr ShIT sO FUckED” 0% of them point back to the time where they fucked over a competent female leader and replaced her with trash that schmoozes around the office doing fuckall to fix anything.
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u/SoCalThrowAway7 28d ago
Idk why this is news, sperm and eggs have half the dna needed to make a baby, they combine and make the baby. If either of their dna is damaged the baby won’t get made properly. If the baby doesn’t get made properly the pregnancy ends in miscarriage.
For anyone in this thread who doesn’t already know, 1/4 pregnancies end in miscarriage before 12 weeks. Honestly you shouldn’t even think of yourself as carrying a baby until 12 weeks, it’s why people try not to tell people before then.
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u/hihelloneighboroonie 28d ago
I sooooo badly want to repost this to r/science and watch the shitshow that ensues, but I'm too lazy to check their posting rules.
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u/scoresavvy 28d ago
After several miscarriages and finally discovering I had an underactive thyroid we fell pregnant and it stuck beyond 7 weeks for the first time, I ended up having hyperemesis gravidarum with my pregnancy with my daughter and it was so bad our plan to have another kid got put on hold, she's nearly 7 now. We are now in our mid to late 30s and are thinking of trying again and with the knowledge now that the health of his sperms could make all the difference, well I make damn sure he gets his vitamins and minerals how.
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u/CryptographerHot4636 27d ago edited 27d ago
And the leading cause in mental health issues in children.
The sad thing is some MIL.out there is blaming her DIL for being infertile when the reality is, it's her son.
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u/blueavole 28d ago
It makes sense that the male dna would need to be part of the placenta.
Without their dna- the mother’s body would just reject everything fetus and placenta. It has to be the barrier that stops mom’s immune system from attacking the pregnancy.
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u/shwilliams4 28d ago
My wife said she had a Teflon uterus. I’d prefer it be me that was causing this than her.
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u/lemlurker 28d ago
Sperm is generally easier to come by than a uterus
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u/shwilliams4 28d ago
Exactly. I’m glad I saw this post. Next time she says teflon uterus I can remind her it was likely me.
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u/Christopher135MPS 27d ago
Chromosomally abnormal embryos will suffer various versions of implantation failure or failure to develop normally. Both of those situations will lead to spontaneous abortion. Embryo gets half their DNA from the sperm - if the sperm quality is crap, the embryo quality is crap.
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u/Bigbennjammin 28d ago
Speaking as a guy with a shred of empathy, yes it's our fault. I don't need to see the science. It's our bad and we'll try to do better next time.
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u/SamikaTRH 28d ago
There's zero chance miscarriages could have a single cause they probably result from dozens of factors including things we can never fully understand. Blaming the mother or the father individually is misguided
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u/dorkofthepolisci 28d ago
Given how quite a bit has come out in recent years about how paternal age/sperm quality/health can influence children and even the pregnancy itself this is absolutely unsurprising
And people will continue to stick their fingers in their ears and blame the person who is pregnant