Boys born to fathers who needed help conceiving have poorer sperm quality as adults than peers conceived without help, a study published in Human Reproduction suggests.
This study, carried out by a team from the Universiteit Brussels – where ICSI was developed – looked at 54 men aged 18 to 22. They were compared with 57 men of the same age.
Men born from ICSI had almost half the sperm concentration and a two-fold lower total sperm count and motile sperm – that can swim well – than men of a similar age whose parents conceived naturally.
They were also nearly three times more likely to have sperm concentrations below the World Health Organization’s definition of a “normal” level – 15 million per millilitre of semen – and four times more likely to have total sperm counts below 39 million.
