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Antioxidants have long been used to treat male infertility as they are believed to reduce oxidative stress on sperm.
However, a new study found no evidence that supplements do anything to increase the chances of conceiving of a man. According to the Daily Mail, the extensive clinical trial of 174 couples in eight fertility centers in America – one of the largest trials to date on supplements and sperm health – has undergone slight changes after three months, but not enough to make a difference in fertility.
The results once again question the thin science supporting the burgeoning supplement industry.
All men in the study, led by Professor Anne Steiner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had been diagnosed with male infertility.
Sperm quality is measured using four main factors.
First: the concentration of sperm. A "normal" concentration of sperm is between 15 million and more than 200 million sperm per milliliter of sperm. A man is diagnosed with "low" sperm if he has less than 15 million sperm per milliliter (that is, less than 39 million sperm per ejaculation).
Second: Motility, or the ability of sperm to swim skillfully towards the egg. A common cause of infertility is sperm that moves slowly.
Third: morphology, which refers to the size and shape of the sperm. To be fertile, men need at least four percent of their sperm to have a "normal" shape (with an oval head and a long tail). An "abnormal" sperm can have a crooked head or a short tail, or even more of a tail, which can make it more difficult for the egg to penetrate.
Finally, they measured whether men had a greater amount of fragmentation of DNA in their sperm than would be considered "normal".
These sperm parameters were measured at the beginning of the test and at three months.
While "spermatogenesis" (the process of sperm maturation) takes 74 days, the impact of antioxidants is short-term, which means that the effects should be seen very quickly after the start of treatment. According to them, three months would be sufficient to follow the impact of these supplements on a few cycles.
The men in the study received each supplement containing vitamins C, D3 and E, folic acid, zinc, selenium and L-carnitine. The control group received a placebo.
At the end of the trial, they found no statistically significant difference.
Basically, there were no significant differences in sperm concentration, morphology, motility, or DNA fragmentation measurements.
No change was observed after three months in men with high levels of DNA fragmentation (28.9% in the antioxidant group and 28.8% in the placebo group) [19659016]. study period of three months, but this did not differ either between the two groups of the entire cohort.
The supplement-taker group had a conception rate of 10.5 percent, compared to 9.1 percent in the placebo.
The team rebadessed its fertility rate at six months – each person continuing with his supplement or placebo – and the numbers did not move.
Professor Steiner said that the study is a necessary update to the obscure field of research surrounding supplements and sperm health.
Most of the previous studies were done in small groups, which were similar in their antecedents and race, using a small variety of supplements.
The purpose of this study was to tackle these big questions: a larger and more varied trial came with the same goods?
The answer was a resounding "no".
Steiner and his co-authors concluded that "the results do not support the empirical use of antioxidant therapy for male infertility in couples trying to conceive naturally".
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