Main Category: Fertility
Also Included In: Nutrition / Diet
Article Date: 19 Oct 2011 - 23:00 PDT
email to a friend 
printer friendly 
opinions 
A joint American and Spanish study released this week shows that Junk food, especially foods with trans fats, can make healthy young men infertile by damaging their sperm.
Fertility experts from Harvard University and the University of Murcia, in southern Spain, analyzed sperm from hundreds of men aged between 18 and 22 and found those whose diet consisted more of junk food had lower quality sperm than those with a healthier diet.
The men were all assessed to ensure they were in good health and had no other issues that might effect their fertility and the sperm of those with "junk" diets seemed less likely to survive inside the womb so they could fertilize the egg and this was even the case if the men were at a balanced weight and took regular exercise.
Japanese scientists looking for similar traits focused more around exercise, showed that of the 215 men they studied those who took moderate exercise, even just brisk walking, had sperm with better swimming abilities than those who were less active.
In other fertility news, researchers from Oxford University in England, have come up with a new technique to increase the success rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Generally speaking when doctors fertilize eggs under lab conditions with a hope to implant them, in the women that is having trouble conceiving for whatever reason, more than half of the embryos have genetic defects. These defects are known as aneuploidies and in short the cells have too many or too few chromosomes. Unfortunately its hard to detect these problems and obviously fertility doctors want to avoid implanting these embryos.
The new technique from Oxford allows testing for new types of genetic defects and during tests on more than 200 eggs and embryos the research showed it was possible to measure the mitochondria and telomeres with considerable accuracy.
Once the link between the characteristics and the fertility rates are measured, it will become easier to select only the best embryos to implant during IVF.
Written by Rupert Shepherd.
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
MLA
8 Dec. 2011.
Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.
posted by Eric Baumholder on 20 Oct 2011 at 8:55 am
This reminds me of the time we had a wave of teen pregnancies in the local schools. It was the result of a rumor that a popular brand of carbonated soft drink caused male infertility.
| post followup | alert a moderator |
Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.
If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.
All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam)
Contact Our News Editors
For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.
Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:
Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.
