1. Tissue specific age acceleration patterns in the sperm of oligozoospermic men
- Author
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Kelaney Stalker, Chad Pollard, Kenneth Aston, and Tim Jenkins
- Subjects
age calculator ,epigenetics ,oligozoospermia ,DNA methylation ,sperm tissue specific aging ,Reproduction ,QH471-489 ,Medicine (General) ,R5-920 - Abstract
To determine if disease can modify aging patterns in an affected tissue without altering the aging patterns of other tissues, blood and semen of individuals with oligozoospermia (n = 10) were compared to the blood and semen of individuals with normozoospermia (n = 24). DNA methylation data was obtained via Illumina's 850 K array. The Horvath and Jenkins age calculators were then utilized to predict the epigenetic age of blood and sperm. Epigenetic age of sperm was approximated using germ-line age differential (GLAD) values. Using nonpaired t-tests, it was found that sperm of oligozoospermic men (mean GLAD score of 0.078) were predicted to be significantly older than the sperm of normozoospermic men (mean GLAD score of −0.017), returning a p-value of 0.03. However, there was not a significant epigenetic age difference between the blood of those with oligozoospermia (mean GLAD equivalent score of −0.027) and normozoospermia (mean GLAD equivalent score of 0.048), producing a p-value of 0.20. These results lead to the conclusion that tissue specific aging is occurring in sperm of oligozoospermic individuals but not in unaffected somatic tissues (in this case, blood).
- Published
- 2022
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