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

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.