French men not producing as much sperm

thelocal.fr

By Andrew M. Seaman
Reuters

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.

"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 Dr. Joëlle Le Moal, the study's lead author from the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in France. 

Le Moal and her colleagues write in the journal Human Reproduction that 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 that she's found similar results in a group of young sperm donors from Boston, too.

For the new study, Le Moal and her colleagues used a database of France's 126 fertility clinics that recorded men's semen samples from 1989 through 2005.

The researchers narrowed their study to 26,600 samples provided by men whose female partners were later found to be infertile. That, they say, minimizes the risk that the men had a fertility problem.

Over the 16-year period, the researchers found there was about a 2 percent annual decrease in the number of sperm in one milliliter of the average man's semen. More >>