Costly vitamin pills that claim to boost male fertility ‘barely help’

EXPENSIVE vitamin pills that claim to boost a man’s fertility have little or no effect, a study found.

The tablets, which can cost £25 for a month’s supply, supposedly have an antioxidant effect by mopping up free oxygen in the body that can damage sperm.

But in trials led by Professor Anne Steiner, of the University of North Carolina, little difference was seen between infertile men taking the pills and those taking a placebo. The tested pills contained the vitamins C, D3 and E, folic acid, zinc, selenium and L-carnitine. These are found in higher levels in sperm of fertile men, and lower in infertile men.

Researchers gave 174 men suffering from infertility the daily supplement over three months. At the end, there was only a tiny rise in the pregnancy rate among partners of the group taking the pills – 9.5 per cent versus 9.3 per cent.