(Reuters Health) – When it comes to sperm counts, French men aren’t what they used to be, according to a new study.
Researchers found that between 1989 and 2005, the number of sperm in one milliliter of the average 35-year-old Frenchman’s semen fell from about 74 million to about 50 million – a decrease of roughly 32 percent.
“That’s certainly within the normal range, but if you think about it, if there continues to be a decrease, we would expect that we’ll get into that infertile range,” said Grace Centola, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology in Birmingham, Alabama.
And the French aren’t the only ones who should be concerned, the researchers said.
“A decline in male reproduction endpoints has been suspected for several decades and is still debated all around the world. Geographical differences have been observed between countries, and between areas inside countries,” said Joëlle Le Moal from the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in France, who led the study.
Writing in the journal Human Reproduction, Le Moal’s team said global analyses have found decreases in sperm counts, as did recent studies in Israel, India, New Zealand and Tunisia.
Centola, who wasn’t involved with the new research, told Reuters Health she had also found similar results in a group of young sperm donors from Boston in the United States. Read full article.
