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Written By: Admin | Updated : August 29, 2012 12:00 PM IST
Last Friday Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the Rajya Sabha that studies show that infertility cases are on the rise in Indian men. Doctors from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) had earlier found that while the sperm count of a normal Indian adult male used to be 60 million per ml just three decades ago, now it is around 20 million per ml. 12-18 million couples in India are diagnosed with infertility every year.
There is a common misconception that low sperm count and libido are linked. According to experts, there's no connection between a man's sexual drive and his sperm count. Doctors say that there is no connection between a man's sexual drive and low sperm count. All men with lower sperm count are not likely to have lower libido due to lower testosterone. "A man with a high libido or sex drive may suffer from low sperm count. The two aren't connected," said fertility expert Dr Sonia Malik.
An extremely urbanised lifestyle with a rise in cases of obesity and diabetes are responsible for these cases. "Although only one sperm is needed to fertilize an egg, several studies have shown that its fertilizing ability starts diminishing if the sperm concentration is below 15 million/ml or if the percentage of normal spermatozoa is below 5% (an average ejaculation contains about 66 million per ml). However, men can produce new sperm every 68-74 days and in case of an abnormal sperm test it should be repeated to confirm the results. On the contrary, women are born with a fixed egg number, which declines with age especially after 35 years," Dr Rohatgi said.
A new study by scientists from the U S Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Tuesday found that a healthy intake of micronutrients is associated with improved sperm DNA quality in older men.
A study conducted by AIIMS found that majority of men who were exposed to high temperature at their work place welders, dyers, blast furnace workers, cement and steel factories were more prone to infertility.
Additional environmental heat increases the temperature of the scrotum, causing a negative effect on sperm production. AIIMS doctors say a one degree elevation in testicular temperature leads to 14% depression of spermatogenesis. Experts say the normal temperature of the testes is three degrees lesser than the core body temperature (37 degrees Celsius or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
"Not only has quantity of sperm production declined in males across the world, there has been a decrease in motility (sperm movement) and morphology (shape and structure) of the sperms. There has been a 2% decrease in quality of male sperm annually. Also, 40% men in reproductive age group are recording a quantitative and qualitative decline in sperm quality. Stress also decreases the hormones that stimulate spermatogenesis," said Dr Rima Dada from AIIMS.
Dr Malik conducted a 10-year comparison study on sperm quality and quantity (2000-2001 to 2010-2011) in Southend Fertility and IVF Centre. According to her study, the percentage of semen ejaculation which is considered less than normal (below 4 ml) increased from 34% to 65% and most suitable ejaculation volume (more than 4ml) went down from 15% to 3%. As far as morphology of sperm was concerned, in 2000-2001, 26% of the sperms showed above 60% normality, whereas in 2000-2011 this reduced to 7%.
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