Nowadays, researchers are stating that, in most cases, standard semen analyses on their own cannot discern the fertile from the infertile populations, and therefore, in addition to semen analysis, assessment of sperm functional tests, including sperm DNA damage, may assist clinicians in achieving this goal (Rocca et al., 2016).Telomeres are conserved repetitive DNA sequences found at the ends of chromosomes and play an important role in maintaining genomic integrity, chromosome pairing, and homologous chromosome synapsis. In addition, these sequences prevent chromosome end joining and facilitate meiosis II segregation. Telomeres are made up of noncoding hexameric tandem repeats (5′-TTAGGG-3′) of DNA and are linked to proteins at the chromosome's end (Li et al., 2017;Turner et al., 2019). The length of telomeres in somatic cells shortens with each cycle of cell division, and this shortening may be accelerated by diseases (cancers, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease), smoking, social interaction, mental health conditions,

Since autophagy was suspected to occur in the pathological situation of varicocele (VCL), we have attempted to confirm it here using a surgical model of varicocele-induced rats. Thirty Wistar rats were divided into three groups (varicocele/sham/control) and analyzed two months after the induction of varicocele. Testicular tissue sections and epididymal mature sperm were then monitored for classic features of varicocele, including disturbance of spermatogenesis, impaired testicular carbohydrate and lipid homeostasis, decreased sperm count, increased sperm nuclear immaturity and DNA damage, oxidative stress, and lipid peroxidation. At the same time, we evaluated the Atg7 protein content and LC3-II/LC3-1 protein ratio in testis and mature sperm cells, two typical markers of early and late cellular autophagy, respectively. We report here that testis and mature sperm show higher signs of autophagy in the varicocele group than in the control and sham groups, probably to try to mitigate the consequences of VCL on the testis and germ cells.