1.Changes in Semen Analysis over Time: A Temporal Trend Analysis of 20 Years of Subfertile Non-Azoospermic Men
Nahid PUNJANI ; Omar Al-Hussein ALAWAMLH ; Soo Jeong KIM ; Carolyn A. SALTER ; Gal WALD ; Miriam FELICIANO ; Nicholas WILLIAMS ; Vanessa DUDLEY ; Marc GOLDSTEIN
The World Journal of Men's Health 2023;41(2):382-389
Purpose:
To examine trends of population-level semen quality over a 20-year period.
Materials and Methods:
We performed a retrospective review of data from the andrology lab of a high volume tertiary hospital. All men with semen samples between 2000 and 2019 were included and men with azoospermia were excluded. Semen parameters were reported using the World Health Organization (WHO) 4th edition. The primary outcome of interest was changes in semen parameters over time. Generalized least squares (GLS) with restricted cubic splines were used to estimate average-monthly measurements, adjusting for age and abstinence period. Contrasts of the estimated averages based on GLS between the first and last months of collection were calculated.
Results:
A total of 8,990 semen samples from subfertile non-azoospermic men were included in our study. Semen volume decreased over time and estimate average at the beginning and end were statistically different (p<0.001). Similarly sperm morphology decreased over time, with a statistically significant difference between estimated averages from start to finish (p<0.001). Semen pH appeared to be increasing over time, but this difference was not significant over time (p=0.060). Sperm concentration and count displayed an increase around 2003 to 2005, but otherwise remained fairly constant over time (p=0.100 and p=0.054, respectively). Sperm motility appeared to decrease over time (p<0.001).
Conclusions
In a large sample of patients presenting to a single institution for fertility assessment, some aspects of semen quality declined across more than two decades. An understanding of the etiologies and driving forces of changing semen parameters over time is warranted.
2.YPED:An Integrated Bioinformatics Suite and Database for Mass Spectrometry-based Proteomics Research
Colangelo M. CHRISTOPHER ; Shifman MARK ; Cheung KEI-HOI ; Stone L. KATHRYN ; Carriero J. NICHOLAS ; Gulcicek E. EROL ; Lam T. TUKIET ; Wu TERENCE ; Bjornson D. ROBERT ; Bruce CAN ; Nairn C. ANGUS ; Rinehart JESSE ; Miller L. PERRY ; Williams R. KENNETH
Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics 2015;(1):25-35
We report a significantly-enhanced bioinformatics suite and database for proteomics research called Yale Protein Expression Database (YPED) that is used by investigators at more than 300 institutions worldwide. YPED meets the data management, archival, and analysis needs of a high-throughput mass spectrometry-based proteomics research ranging from a single laboratory, group of laboratories within and beyond an institution, to the entire proteomics com-munity. The current version is a significant improvement over the first version in that it contains new modules for liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) database search results, label and label-free quantitative proteomic analysis, and several scoring outputs for phosphopeptide site localization. In addition, we have added both peptide and protein comparative analysis tools to enable pairwise analysis of distinct peptides/proteins in each sample and of overlapping peptides/proteins between all samples in multiple datasets. We have also implemented a targeted proteomics module for automated multiple reaction monitoring (MRM)/selective reaction monitoring (SRM) assay development. We have linked YPED’s database search results and both label-based and label-free fold-change analysis to the Skyline Panorama repository for online spectra visualization. In addition, we have built enhanced functionality to curate peptide identifications into an MS/MS peptide spectral library for all of our protein database search identification results.