The average number of sperm per ejaculation among Taiwanese men — as well as its quality — is decreasing, according to a study cited in the Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday.
The study, conducted by the Taipei Medical University’s School of Public Health and Center for Reproductive Medicine and Sciences from 2001 to 2010, collected sperm samples from 7,187 people in northern Taiwan aged between 26 and 57, the article said.
The study recorded the number, volume, motility and morphology of the sperm. Doctors estimate that the volume of a healthy man’s ejaculate should be from 3cm3 to 4cm3 and contain 40 million to 60 million sperm cells per cubic centimeter — meaning each sample should contain 120 million to 240 million sperm cells.
However, the study found that the volume of the samples fell by an average of 0.03cm3 per ejaculation, while the number of sperm cells fell 487,500 per cubic centimer, representing an average loss of 3 million sperm cells per ejaculation each year, the report said.
Sperm motility at normal speeds dropped by 0.8 percent, while motility at fast speeds dropped by 0.47 percent, while the percentage of normally shaped sperm fell by 0.65 percent each year, the report cited the study as saying.
According to Tseng Chi-jui (曾啟瑞), director of the university’s Center for Reproductive Medicine and Sciences, environmental factors are behind the issue.
“Environmental dioxin acts as a hormone and affects the fertility of men and women, because it is similar in structure to the hormone estrogen. Its half-life in the body is about nine years,” he said.
Lifestyle factors also influence the quality of sperm, with keeping irregular hours, high stress levels, frequent alcohol use and smoking deteriorating its health, he said.
He also encouraged men to avoid wearing tight pants or taking hot baths.
Cathay General Hospital’s Assisted Reproductive Center director Lai Tsung-Hsuan (賴宗炫) said he had also observed sperm quality in Taiwanese men declining.
The trend might be global, because the WHO used to define at least 20 million sperm cells per cubic centimeter as normal, but in 2010 revised the figure to at least 15 million, Lai said.
Lai cited as an example a male patient of his in his early 40s.
The patient had normal, albeit somewhat poor sperm quality two years ago, but this year tests showed that “the man’s sperm were unable to move forward” and he and his wife had to pursue in vitro fertilization to conceive a child.
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