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
