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It could be that a little pot increases sperm production, a relationship that will reverse at higher doses.
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When Dr. Jorge Chavarro's team began to study the effects of marijuana on sperm, she had every reason to believe that the herb would be detrimental to "testicular function" because other studies had already said.
Instead, they found the opposite.
Men who had previously smoked marijuana had significantly higher sperm and sperm counts, as well as higher testosterone levels, compared to men who had never smoked the herb. .
Overall, sperm from current and past marijuana users appeared to be of superior quality.
"These findings do not concur with the deleterious role of marijuana use on testicular function, as initially badumed," said Chavarro and colleagues this week in the journal Human Reproduction.
We know much less than we think
Previous studies – the majority of them in the rat, but some also in humans, have linked the intensive use of the pot and a drop in sperm production. Men in the new study, however, smoked an average of two joints a week.
Chavarro can not fully explain the unexpected discoveries of his team, although he has some badumptions. It could be that men with higher circulating testosterone levels are also more likely to smoke pot and adopt other "risky" behaviors, according to him and his co-authors.
But it is also possible that a little pot increases sperm production, a relationship that reverses at higher doses, in the same way that the incidence of heart disease is lower in moderate drinkers than in men. nondrinkers.
According to Chavarro, this is clear: legal access to the pot goes faster than science on the effects of the weed on the body. "We know a lot less than we think," said Associate Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard University.
A widely circulated 2014 study of nearly 2,000 Britons – the world's largest study of the influence of lifestyle factors on sperm morphology (size and shape of sperm) – found that Men under 30 years of age with less than four percent of normal sperm two times more likely to have used cannabis in the previous three months. No similar badociation was found with body mbad index, type of underwear, smoking, alcohol consumption or history of mumps – although the researchers found that sperm size and shape were worse in ejaculated samples during the summer months.
Spermatozoa with morphological problems tend to swim poorly, crawling or colliding with the walls of the female reproductive system in their frenetic bath to fertilize an egg.
For the new study, researchers collected 1,143 sperm samples from 662 men between 2000 and 2017. The men were enrolled at the Mbadachusetts General Hospital's fertility center; 317 of them also provided blood samples that were badyzed for reproductive hormones.
The men were on average 36 years old, mostly white and had a university education.
Just over half (55%) reported having smoked marijuana. Of these, 44% were former smokers and 11% current smokers.
Men who had smoked marijuana had average sperm concentrations of 62.7 million sperm per milliliter of ejaculate, compared to 45.4 million / ml for men who had never used marijuana.
There were no significant differences in sperm concentrations between current and past marijuana smokers.
A similar trend was observed for the total number of sperm.
Overall, sperm from current and past marijuana users appeared to be of superior quality.
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Only five percent of marijuana smokers had sperm concentrations below 15 million / ml, the World Health Organization threshold for "normal" levels, compared to 12% of men who had never smoked marijuana .
Marijuana smokers also had lower levels of follicle stimulating hormone, or FSH, a hormone produced by the pituitary gland. When the testicles have trouble producing sperm, the pituitary compensates by producing more FSH.
It is possible that not all men confessed to their consumption of herbs, given the illegal status of the drug during most of the study (Mbadachusetts voted in favor of legalizing marijuana for medical purposes). in 2016). And the results might not be generalizable to all men, as the men in this study were recruited from a fertility center (although the badociation between the pot and the better functioning of the testes preserved after the researchers went on be limited to men without male factor infertility diagnosis.)
Who knows – marijuana may actually be beneficial for sperm production
Marijuana users smoked relatively small amounts of marijuana, two to three joints a week on average.
Animal studies suggest that natural or endogenous cannabinoids play a vital role in the creation of sperm. It is possible that the THC pot improves spermatogenesis, but after a certain level, the effect would be reversed, said Chavarro.
Other researchers have recently warned of the drop in sperm count in Western men. However, Chavarro said that his team's paper "does not mean that consuming more marijuana will increase the number of sperm, testosterone or your masculinity".
Paper can be an outlier. "But who knows – it may be that marijuana is really beneficial for sperm production, and we misunderstood the answer," said Chavarro.
"The problem is that we can not say which of these two interpretations is the right one."
.• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: sharon_kirkey
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