P-20: The Relationship between Occupationand Semen Quality

Background: The main object of this study was to determine the frequency of occupational categories of men who attended an infertility clinic, and to evaluate the differences in the semen quality parameters among occupational categories. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on men who attended the Infertility Clinic of Royan Institute, located in Tehran, Iran. The study consisted of questionnaires completed by trained interviewers to provide information about demographics marital status, type and duration of infertility, occupational history including job title and task, and exposure to occupational physical hazards. Additionally, medical examinations by an urologist and semen analysis tests were performed for each participant. A total of 1164 patients were recruited by simple randomization from September 2009 to March 2010. Each subject signed an informed consent document after the goals of the study were fully explained. For statistical analysis SPSS 16 for Windows was used. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the study population. The relationships between semen parameters, age and body mass index (BMI) were investigated using Spearman non-parametric correlation. Analysis of variance was used to compare semen parameters between occupational groups. Results: The means and standard deviations of age, infertility duration and BMI of the participants were 33.83 ± 5.79 years, 6.23 ± 0.14 years and 26.1 ± 4.12, respectively. The frequencies of primary and secondary infertility were 89.7 and 10.3 percent, respectively. Sperm analysis test results revealed that the means and standard deviations of the sperm count, percentage of normal sperm morphology and percentages of sperm with class A and class B motilities were 44.89 ± 32.43 million/ml, 7.36 ± 5.3, 8.6 ± 7 and 23.13 ± 10.8, respectively. Statistical analysis revealed a significant negative correlation between age and the mean percentage of sperm witClass B motility (rs = - 0.13, p