Association between mental stress & some antioxidant enzymes of seminal plasma.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Mental stress, which is responsible for various disorders, is one of the most important medical and social problems. It is reported that mental stress causes abnormality in sperm quality. Most of the previous investigations done to study the association between mental stress and infertility were carried out with infertile men. Infertility itself and/or its therapy may lead to stress. Further, most studies investigating the association between psychological stress and semen quality have lacked information on biochemical parameters. In the present study, we investigated the effect of mental stress due to final exams on two important antioxidant enzymes of the seminal plasma, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase in normal healthy medical students. METHODS Semen samples were collected from 27 healthy male volunteers, who were third semester students of a medical school, just before (stress period) and 10.19+/-0.83 wk after (non-stress period) the final examinations. Psychological stress of participants was measured by the State Trait Anxiety Inventory. After standard semen analysis, semen samples were centrifuged at 10,000 x g for 15 min. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase activities were measured in the seminal plasma. RESULTS During stress period, stress scores and SOD activities increased significantly compared to the non-stress period. Catalase activities showed no change. Spermatozoa concentrations, motility index and percentage of rapid progressive motility decreased under stress. INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION Our results indicated that mental stress negatively affected semen quality. Increase in SOD activities led to poor quality of semen parameters.