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We know that increasing maternal age is associated with declining fertility, but assessing the rate of decline in male fertility is more difficult. The current study enrolled 55 older men (age range, 52-79) who were referred for a prostate cancer-detection study based on seminal cytology. All of the men were asymptomatic but had elevated prostate-specific antigen levels that required prostate biopsy; immediately before transrectal ultrasound and biopsy, each man provided a single semen sample. A comparison group consisted of 409 men younger than 52 who volunteered for screening as potential sperm donors.
Sperm density did not differ significantly between the older and younger men, but the older men had a 47% reduction in median semen volume …