Public release date: 12-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Aeron Haworth aeron.haworth@manchester.ac.uk 44-161-275-8383 University of Manchester

Lifestyle advice given by doctors to men diagnosed with infertility should be radically overhauled according to research published today (Wednesday).

Current guidelines from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence1 advise doctors to warn infertile men about the dangers of smoking, alcohol consumption and recreational drug use, as well as the risks of being overweight and wearing tight underwear.

However, a team of scientists from the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield have found that many common lifestyle choices make little difference to male fertility, based on how many swimming sperm men produce.

The study, published in the medical journal Human Reproduction, recruited 2,249 men from 14 fertility clinics around the UK2 and asked them to fill out detailed questionnaires about their lifestyle. The information was then compared between 939 men who ejaculated low numbers of swimming sperm and a control group of 1,310 men who produced higher numbers.

The research found that men who ejaculated low numbers of swimming sperm were 2.5 times more likely to have had testicular surgery, twice as likely to be of black ethnicity, and 1.3 times more likely to be in manual work, not wear boxer shorts, or not had a previous conception. Surprisingly, men's use of recreational drugs, tobacco and alcohol, as well as their weight measured by their body mass index (BMI), had little effect3.

Dr Andrew Povey, from the University of Manchester's School of Community Based Medicine, said: "Despite lifestyle choices being important for other aspects of our health, our results suggest that many lifestyle choices probably have little influence on how many swimming sperm they ejaculate. For example, whether the man was a current smoker or not was of little importance. The proportion of men who had low numbers of swimming sperm was similar whether they had never been a smoker or a smoker who was currently smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day. Similarly, there was little evidence of any risk associated with alcohol consumption.

"This potentially overturns much of the current advice given to men about how they might improve their fertility and suggests that many common lifestyle risks may not be as important as we previously thought. Delaying fertility treatment then for these couples so that they can make changes to their lifestyles, for which there is little evidence of effectiveness, is unlikely to improve their chances of a conception and, indeed, might be prejudicial for couples with little time left to lose."

In assessing male fertility, the team chose to use the number of swimming sperm men ejaculated because this broadly correlates with how fertile a man is likely to be and also often determines the type of fertility treatment that may be used if required.

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Unhealthy lifestyles have little impact on sperm quality