Young men who are obese appear to have lower sperm counts than their slimmer peers but it's not certain whether obesity can hamper a man's chance of becoming a father.READ ALSO: "And a Diet Coke, please ..." - KFC serves up 1 ton of fried chicke
Young men who are obese appear to have lower sperm counts than their slimmer peers but it’s not certain whether obesity can hamper a man’s chance of becoming a father.
READ ALSO: "And a Diet Coke, please ..." - KFC serves up 1 ton of fried chicken
A new study, reported in the journal Fertility and Sterility, has added to evidence linking obesity to poorer quality sperm.
Recent studies have found that compared to leaner men, obese men tend to have not only lower sperm counts but also less progressively motile and rapidly mobile sperm, meaning in simplified terms that their sperm aren’t very good swimmers.
However, the picture has been clouded by the age factor: older men tend to have lower sperm counts and also tend to be fatter than younger men, making it unclear how much of the decline in sperm count could be attributed to obesity alone.
But the new study found that obese men aged 20 to 30 tend to have lower sperm counts than those of normal weight in the same age group.
Lead researcher Dr Uwe Paasch of the University of Leipzig in Germany and colleagues analysed information from a database on men who had come to their fertility clinic to get their semen tested between 1999 and 2005.
The 2157 men in the study had no known fertility problems and were 30 years old on average.
Although obese men had a lower average sperm count than lighter men, they were still within what’s though to be the normal range for sperm count, between 20 and 150 million/ml of semen.
Dr Paasch told Reuters Health “we do not know in detail” whether the difference in sperm count would affect the fertility of obese men, but said it would offer another reason for young men to try and maintain a healthy weight.
The reasons for lower sperm counts among obese men are not yet clear.
Although previous studies have found obese men have different levels of reproductive hormones such as testosterone, in this particular study hormone levels correlated with age but not body weight.
Dr Paasch pointed out that in other research he and his colleagues have found high levels of body fat affect the collection of proteins that are crucial for the survival of sperm.
