The lifestyle factors that affect male infertility

Infertility is no longer considered just a woman’s problem, with Melbourne researchers uncovering the driving factors that are preventing men from becoming a dad.

Infertility is no longer considered just a woman’s problem, with Melbourne researchers uncovering that a man’s age, lifestyle and even his genes are a driving factor preventing him from becoming a dad.

With half of all IVF cycles involving male infertility, Hudson Institute of Medical Research scientists are now leading studies to track both the children of infertile men born via IVF and men preparing to undergo assisted reproduction, to uncover how sperm is damaged and whether infertility is passed on to their sons.

Professor Rob McLachlan, who is also an IVF specialist and medical director of the national men’s reproductive health resource called Healthy Male, told the institute’s public forum that while men continue to produce sperm into old age, this sperm was not as healthy as what as produced in a man’s younger years.

Man’s age, lifestyle and even his genes are a driving factor infertility.

“There is more damage, more nicks in the DNA of older sperm,” Prof McLachlan said.

“Some rare conditions in offspring become less rare in older men. That tells you something is going wrong.

“If you’re going to have children, men need to plan to have them earlier in life.

“Some of the things you do in your lifestyle can creep through and change the dimmer switch on the genes.”

With colleagues at Monash University, Prof McLachlan is leading a national research project to uncover what genes are involved in male infertility, to devise new treatment fixing the root cause.

“Unless you know the cause of why the sperm count is poor or the shape of the sperm is poor, you can’t fix it,” he said.

“In the last 25 years since we developed ways of injecting the sperm into the egg, we have bypassed this problem.

“But now we have powerful new gene analysis techniques and we’re beginning to get some breakthroughs of genes that could be the cause.

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“I think when you unpack the whole suitcase there are going to be lots of different things – infection, STIs and genes buried in there that are causing what we see now as just low sperm quality.”

Dr Liza O’Donnell, a senior scientist in the Hudson’s Centre for Reproductive Health, is also developing a blood test that would replace a biopsy to gauge how the testes are functioning.

Cells in the testes that produce sperm release signature proteins that can be detected in the bloodstream.

The researchers are now working to match these proteins to the different causes of infertility in the next step towards developing the screening test.