Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome

In the Western world fertility rates are low and infertility is a major health problem. Unofficial statistics from Denmark reveal that about 6% of all Danish children are now born after assisted reproduction techniques, including in vitro fertilization, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, donor insemination or homologous insemination. However, there are no retrospective data on trends in fecundity (ability to conceive). We, and others, have focused on some aspects of adverse trends in male reproductive health such as the rising incidence of testicular cancer, low and probably declining semen quality, high and possibly increasing frequencies of undescended testes and hypospadias. Due to medical specialization and the different ages at presentation of symptoms, reproductive problems used to be analysed separately by various professional groups, for instance paediatric endocrinologists, urologists, andrologists or oncologists. There is evidence that poor semen quality, testicular cancer, undescended testes and hypospadias are symptoms of one underlying entity, testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS), which may be increasingly common due to adverse environmental influences. Experimental and epidemiological studies suggest that TDS is the result of disruption of embryonal programming and gonadal development during fetal life. An endocrine disrupter hypothesis to explain the adverse trends has been proposed. It is recommended that future epidemiological studies on trends in male reproductive health should not focus on one symptom alone, but be more comprehensive and take all aspects of TDS into account.