Spermatozoa halve, male fertility declines. Over the last forty years, the concentration of spermatozoa in men has fallen by 50%, and the World Health Organisation has been forced to revise downwards the parameters of normality of the spermiogram several times in twenty years.
Raising the alarm is Andrea Salonia, urologist and andrologist at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, advisor to the Italian Society of Urology, ahead of the 98th national congress of the scientific society to be held in Sorrento from 6 to 9 November.
‘Our country’s under-natality,’ Salonia explains, ‘is also the result of this problem, which adds to the widespread tendency to seek parenthood at an increasingly advanced age. After the age of 35 the biological probability of having a child is reduced by 10 per cent, and after 40 it drops dramatically. Age also counts for men’.
Semen quality is not only a reproductive issue. Infertile men, at the same age, show overall poorer health than fertile men, with higher risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension and neoplasia. ‘It is as if an infertile male is biologically older than his age,’ the expert notes.
Bad lifestyles – overweight, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking – also affect fertility and reproductive success. Today, 15% of couples experience difficulties in conceiving, and in 30% of cases the problem is exclusively male, but still too often men do not undergo urological or andrological evaluation, even after several cycles of assisted fertilisation.
