Multinucleate Spermatids in Aging Human Testes

A comparative morphologic study between the testes of 25 young adult men and 41 elderly men without testicular or related pathological conditions revealed the presence of multinucleate spermatids, showing up to 86 nuclei, in the testes of 3 of the elderly men. The formation of multinucleate spermatids is probably due to cell fusion, since the number of nuclei in these cells is not always 2n and multinucleate spermatocytes were uncommon. This anomaly seems to be another manifestation of an involutive process that also affects other cell types in the aging testis.