The National
Spinal Cord
Injury Association

Disability in the News.

Semen Quality Stable After Spinal Injury.

NEW YORK, Jun 25 (Reuters) -- The semen quality of men paralyzed by spinal cord injuries remains constant for years after injury, researchers report.

"Men with spinal cord injury who are considering biologic fatherhood should be advised that the number of years after injury need not be a determinant in deciding when to start a family,'' conclude investigators at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and the University of Miami School of Medicine in Florida.

Their findings appear in the current issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Over 10,000 new cases of spinal cord injury occur in the United States each year, with four out of five victims young or middle-aged men. The Miami researchers note that about 31% of these men are already married at the time of their injury, while another 30% become married in the years following their injury. Therefore, ``fertility is of paramount concern in men with spinal cord injury,'' the authors say.

They explain that a decline in sperm motility (movement) seems to occur during the first few months following spinal cord injury. But until this study, little was understood about the long-term effects of paralysis on sperm viability.

Using artificial and natural ejaculation methods, the researchers collected 638 semen samples from 125 men suffering from spinal cord injury. The time elapsed since patient injury varied from less than 1 year to more than 18 years. Tests on sperm count and sperm motility ``found no difference in semen quality with years postinjury.'' Although an initial decline in sperm motility ``probably occurs within the first few months after injury,'' the authors say semen quality ''does not undergo a progressive deterioration'' thereafter. They conclude that ``the time that has elapsed since injury should not influence (the) decision about the optimal time to father a child.''

Of course, some paralyzed men may opt to have their semen frozen in the first few weeks or months following injury, before injury-associated declines in sperm motility set in. However, the Miami team point out that semen retrieval can be problematic in patients recovering from spinal cord injury, and, in any case, ``frozen semen specimens of injured and noninjured men lose 50% to 80% of their motility upon thawing.''

SOURCE: Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 1998;79:625-628.  
 

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