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Male infertility linked to ‘high death risk’

Washington: Researchers have said that men, who are infertile because

of defects in their semen, appear to be at higher death risk compared

to men with normal semen.

According to a study led by a researcher at

the Stanford University School of Medicine,

men with two or more abnormalities in their

semen were more than twice as likely to die

over a roughly eight-year period as men who

had normal semen, the study found.

In the new study, Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD,

assistant professor of urology and Stanford's

director of male reproductive medicine and

surgery, and his colleagues examined records

of men ages 20 to 50 who had visited one of

two centers to be evaluated for possible

infertility. In all, about 12,000 men fitting this

description were seen between 1994 and

2011 at Stanford Hospital and Clinics or

between 1989 and 2009 at the Baylor College

of Medicine in Houston.

At both clinics, data were available for several

aspects of a patient's semen quality, such as

total semen volume and sperm counts,

motility and shape. (Dolores Lamb, PhD, and

Larry Lipshultz, MD, of Baylor were senior

authors of the study.)

By keying identifiers for the patients to data

in the National Death Index and the Social

Security Death index, the investigators were

able to monitor these men's mortality for a

median of about eight years.

While no single semen abnormality in itself

predicted mortality, men with two or more

such abnormalities had more than double the

risk of death over the eight-year period

following their initial fertility examination

compared with those with no semen

abnormalities. The greater the number of

abnormalities, the higher the mortality rate,

the study found.

Of the 11,935 men who were followed, 69

died during the follow-up period – a

seemingly small number. This reflects, first

and foremost, the patients' relative youth:

Their median age was 36.6 years. But it also

reflects the fact that men who get evaluated

for infertility tend to have a higher-than-

average socio-economic status and have

accordingly better diets, education and access

to health care.

The new study has been published online in

the journal Human Reproduction.

ANI

Kofi Oppong Kyekyeku

I am a Ghanaian Broadcast Journalist/Writer who has an interest in General News, Sports, Entertainment, Health, Lifestyle and many more.

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