LONDON: Men with low sperm count are more likely to have a number of health issues that put them at increased risk of illness, a study has found.<\/p>\n
The research on 5,177 men in Italy evaluated semen quality, reproductive function and metabolic risk in males referred for fertility evaluation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur study clearly shows that low sperm count by itself is associated with metabolic alterations, cardiovascular risk and low bone mass,\u201d said Alberto Ferlin, who<\/p>\n
carried the study at University of Padova in Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cInfertile men are likely to have important co-existing health problems or risk factors that can impair quality of life and shorten their lives,\u201d said Ferlin, now an<\/p>\n
associate professor at University of Brescia in Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cFertility evaluation gives men the unique opportunity for health assessment and disease prevention,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In the study, about half the men had low sperm counts and were 1.2 times more likely than those with normal sperm counts to have greater body fat (bigger<\/p>\n
waistline and higher body mass index, or BMI).<\/p>\n
They were also more likely to have higher blood pressure, \u201cbad\u201d (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides, and lower \u201cgood\u201d (HDL) cholesterol.<\/p>\n
They also had a higher frequency of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of these and other metabolic risk factors that increase the chance of developing diabetes,<\/p>\n
heart disease and stroke, the researchers said.<\/p>\n
A measure of insulin resistance, another problem that can lead to diabetes, also was higher in men with low sperm counts, they said.<\/p>\n
Low sperm count was defined as less than 39 million per ejaculate.<\/p>\n
The researchers found a 12-fold increased risk of hypogonadism, or low testosterone levels, in men with low sperm counts.<\/p>\n
Half the men with low testosterone had osteoporosis or low bone mass, a possible precursor to osteoporosis, as found on a bone density scan.<\/p>\n
These findings, according to Ferlin, suggest that low sperm count of itself is associated with poorer measures of cardiometabolic health but that hypogonadism<\/p>\n
is mainly involved in this association.<\/p>\n
He cautioned that their study does not prove that low sperm counts cause metabolic derangements, but rather that sperm quality is a mirror of the general male<\/p>\n
health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Men with low sperm count are more likely to have a number of health issues that put them at increased risk of illness, a study has found. The research on 5,177 men in Italy evaluated semen quality, reproductive function and metabolic risk in males referred for fertility evaluation. \u201cOur study clearly shows that low […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25433,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25431\/revisions\/25433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}