Arterial hypertension in men is related to sperm quality

Approximately 15% of all married couples encounter problems in creating a child, and in half of these it is due to deviations in men.

Previously, it has been shown that in the prospective observation of men suffering from infertility in the following years after the discovery of this condition, an increased level of total mortality and mortality resulting from the presence of cardiovascular diseases was found.

This suggests that reproductive problems may serve as a warning sign of deteriorating male health in general.

In December 2014, the journal Fertility and Sterility published online the results of a study conducted with the support of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, which showed the relationship between the deterioration of sperm quality in men and various medical conditions in already quite young representatives of the strong sex.

In the aforementioned study, the relationship between sperm quality and health was analyzed in a cohort study involving 9,387 men with a mean age of 38 years who underwent tests for infertility between 1994 and 2011.

p>

Forty-four percent of the participants in this cohort had at least one medical diagnosis at the time of infertility research that was unrelated to their inability to conceive a child.

When using Charlson’s comorbidity index /that is, these are medical conditions accompanying infertility, but at the same time interacting with it/ it turned out that men who had the highest values ​​of this index had the lowest volume indicators of sperm, sperm concentration, their motility, for the total number of gametes, and their morphological assessment was also the worst.

Multiple deviations from the statistical norm of various sperm indicators are associated with a high degree of certainty with the probability of a significant medical problem.

The frequency of pathological changes was significantly higher in men with endocrine, cardiovascular, genitourinary and skin diseases compared to participants without these conditions.

Increased frequency of deviations in relation to the various indicators of sperm was associated with arterial hypertension, diseases of peripheral vessels and with cerebrovascular disease, and also with non-ischemic heart diseases.

One of the possible explanations for the established relationship could be the following fact. About 15% of all human genes are directly involved in the reproduction process, and most of them are also essential in the functioning of other body systems.

At the same time, the discovery of other specific factors that influence spermatogenesis in men makes it possible to provide better counseling to patients, based only on ejaculate analysis.

For example, the established association with arterial hypertension may be of significant practical interest, given the widespread prevalence of this condition.

The authors of the study believe that a visit to a family planning and reproduction clinic can be an excellent opportunity to diagnose a number of important medical problems, and their treatment, in turn, can help solve the problem of infertility.

For example, starting treatment for hypertension and cardiovascular disease, which are associated with poor semen quality, would lead to an improvement in male fertility after about 2 months. But it should be noted that some of the therapies applicable to cardiovascular diseases could lead to deterioration of sperm quality.