Effect of Yoga and Meditation based lifestyle Intervention on spermatozoal transcripts and miRNA in idiopathic infertility and early pregnancy loss

The stressors in complexmodern lifestyle seem to be accelerating and have been proposed to be thecontributors to various “lifestyle related†chronic diseases such asdepression, heart diseases and diabetes. These have been implicated as one ofthe causal factors in the etiology of various reproductive disorders likeinfertility, early pregnancy loss, implantation failures in IVF cycles andcongenital malformations due to alarming effects on the health of the futureprogeny. The paternal contribution has important implications in fertilizationand for understanding early developmental process and their effect on outcomeof the future progeny. The effects are adverse due to decrease in quality oflife and poor response to pharmacologic treatment. The impact of antioxidant onnuclear DNA damage is still controversial. Efforts are underway to findnon-pharmacologic therapies to relieve stress and anxiety, and adoption of yogaas an integral part of our lifestyle is a promising beneficial treatmentmodality. Yoga, the ancient Indian discipline, is aimed at achieving union andharmony between our mind and body, and brings balance to all aspects of one’sbeing. It is a highly advanced technique for attaining perfect alignment ofbody and prepare it for meditation.

Since we havealready shown in our previously published studies that ROS causes bothmitochondrial and nuclear DNA damage hence we propose (in this study) to assessboth oxidative stress and oxidative DNA damage in semen (1, 2, 3). Ongoingstudies from our laboratory have also shown the beneficial effect of the briefYBLI for 21 days in modifying the gene expression in male partners with coupleswith recurrent implantation failure as well as recurrent pregnancy loss (4).The effect of quitting smoking, alcohol intake, deep breathing (Pranayama)along with modifying factors of lifestyle interventions like “Yoga†and“Meditation†can, therefore, be evaluated by the measurement of oxidativestress, DNA damage, telomere dynamics and gene expression. In the presentproposal, we plan to study the effect of lifestyle modifying factors andpotential interventions on the sperm integrity and expression of mRNA andmiRNAs by enrolling patients for yoga and meditation based lifestyleintervention (YBLI).