Dados do Trabalho

Title

SEMINAL CONCENTRATION OF PATIENTS WHO PERFORMED LABORATORY EVALUATION PRE AND POST COVID PANDEMIC

Objective

Changes in the lifestyle of the general population during the pandemic, not just the coronavirus infection, may have had an impact on male fertility. The aim of this study was to compare the sperm concentration of patients who underwent sperm analysis before the pandemic and those who underwent it after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.

Methods

Retrospective study based on the analysis of the results of spermograms and questionnaires with authorization to use patient data from a private fertility clinic located at Curitiba in the period between October/2017 and July/2023. Patients were divided into two groups: spermograms performed pre-Covid pandemic (October/2017 to February/2020) and post-Covid pandemic (March/2020 to July/2023). The seminal parameters were evaluated as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) at the WHO laboratory manual for the examination and processing of human semen in 2021, and the concentration of 15 million spermatozoa/mL was considered as the cutoff line.

Results

2127 spermograms were evaluated, 1000 of them pre-Covid pandemic and 1127 after the start of the Covid pandemic. In pre-pandemic patients, 18% of them had concentrations below 15 million/mL, whereas in post-pandemic patients, 28% had concentrations below 15 million/mL. Regarding the average concentration of spermatozoa/mL, in the pre-pandemic period it was 63 million, while in the post-pandemic period the average concentration was 54 million spermatozoa/mL.

Conclusion

This study showed that after the coronavirus pandemic there was an increase in the number of patients with low concentration and a drop in average sperm concentration. Considering the size of the sample analyzed in this study, male fertility was affected by the pandemic. More studies are still needed to understand how this occurs.

Keywords

Sperm parameters, Male fertility, Quarantine, Covid.