Long-term cryostorage of semen in a human sperm bank does not affect clinical outcomes

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the affect of the duration of donor sperm storage on pregnancy success among women undergoing assisted reproduction.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional study.

Setting: Sperm bank.

Patient(s): A total of 119,558 specimens retrieved using a clinical information database of young adult men who were qualified sperm donors at the Hunan Province Human Sperm Bank of China from 2001 to 2016.

Intervention(s): Analysis of semen samples and clinical outcomes after semen use.

Main outcome measure(s): Clinical information included semen parameters before and after freezing, clinical pregnancy, abortion and live birth rates after semen use.

Result(s): The sperm's frozen-thaw survival rate decreased from 85.72% to 73.98% after 15 years of cryopreservation (P<.01). The clinical pregnancy rate of women undergoing artificial insemination with donor sperm was 23.09%, 22.36% and 22.32%, the clinical abortion rate was 10.06%, 10.02% and 12.00% and the live birth rate was 82.17%, 80.21% and 80.00% in the groups with 0.5-5, 6-10 and 11-15 storage years, respectively. The clinical pregnancy rate of women undergoing in vitro fertilization was 64.29%, 64.94% and 53.48%, the clinical abortion rate was 12.26%, 11.38% and 17.39% and the live birth rate was 81.63%, 79.11% and 73.91%, in the groups with 0.5-5, 6-10 and 11-15 years, respectively.

Conclusion(s): The long-term cryostorage of semen in a human sperm bank does not affect clinical outcomes. However, cryopreservation longer than 5 years negatively influenced the quality of frozen-thawed donor sperm samples.

Keywords: Clinical outcomes; cryopreservation; frozen-thaw survival rate; human sperm; storage time.