Inconceivable truth

• Autores: Moya Sarner
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3152, 2017, págs. 28-32
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Moya Sarner finds out how individuals are heading for a male fertility crisis and how to face it. In a society where couples are choosing to conceive later in life, Allan Pacey at the University of Sheffield, UK says, if the decline in sperm counts is real, then the combination of this is a total disaster. Following the striking news that sperm counts have decreased by almost 60 percent in richer countries in the past 40 years, and are continuing to fall by 1.6 percent every year, based on the analysis conducted by Hagai Levine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. One possible explanation lies in the fact that, even though men produce sperm throughout adulthood, their ability to do so is largely preprogrammed in the womb, probably because of impaired production of male sex hormones by the testes, known as testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS), or a reduced number of sperm-supporting cells. Moreover, reframing the conversation about fertility to include men should help address male infertility and could also offer relief to those men who feel a social pressure to have children by a certain age.