Study links male infertility to host of other unrelated health maladies

Poor semen production can interfere with a couple’s ability to conceive, but new research from Stanford University suggests it also may be connected to a variety of health problems unrelated to fertility, including high blood pressure and heart disease. A study of more than 9,000 men — their mean age was 38 — who sought help for infertility found that those with low sperm counts, poor sperm motility and other impaired semen production were at greater risk of having certain heart and vascular problems, plus skin diseases and disorders relating to the endocrine system. The more defects in the men’s semen, the more likely they were to have other health problems.

The research, published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility, supports and refines earlier studies that found an increased risk of cancer and of early death in men with poor semen production. Taken together, the studies suggest that fertility is closely tied to overall health in men.

About 15 percent of U.S. couples struggle with infertility, and in about half of those cases, the man has problems with semen production. Dr. Michael Eisenberg, lead author of the paper, said the man’s fertility is never looked at in roughly 1 in 4 cases in which couples have trouble conceiving.

Though the study provides interesting details on the associations between health and fertility, researchers are not yet able to answer what’s driving that relationship.

Erin Allday