A new study from the United States, based on data from 1,774 adult men across Asia, North America, South America, and Europe, has shed light on a perplexing issue that has persisted for many years.
Several large-scale assessment studies in recent years have indicated that one of the reasons for the increasing prevalence of infertility and reduced fertility is the strange decline in sperm quality among men.
The new research led by Dr. Melissa Perry, an epidemiologist and microbiologist at George Mason University in the United States, utilized a dataset collected over 50 years from 25 studies worldwide, uncovering a significant problem.
Infertility is becoming a growing issue affecting men globally – (Image sourced from the Internet)
The results recently published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives confirm that the cause is the increased exposure to pesticides.
You don’t have to be a farmer to encounter this issue. Pesticide exposure can occur silently through contact with water sources and food contaminated with these harmful chemicals.
This was discovered based on the initial clue of the correlation between sperm density and several seemingly unrelated health issues, such as cancer.
Men with low sperm density are often diagnosed with cancer, and vice versa; however, this does not necessarily mean one causes the other, but rather that a third factor is causing both problems: pesticides.
“It is difficult to identify a single biological mechanism that explains the observed adverse associations,” the authors acknowledged.
However, their animal experiments have confirmed this. In addition to causing cancer, pesticides also induce inflammation in the brains of test mice, specifically in the areas responsible for sperm production.
The primary toxicity of commonly used pesticides, such as organophosphate and N-methyl carbamate, lies in their ability to inhibit enzymes involved in the normal breakdown of neurotransmitters like acetylcholine.
“The available evidence has reached a point where we must take management actions to reduce pesticide exposure,” Dr. Perry stated.
A review conducted in 2022 revealed that the average sperm count among volunteers worldwide has decreased by 51% from 1973 to 2018, even after excluding those who were infertile from the study.
Specifically, the average sperm count per milliliter of semen has dropped from 101.2 million to 49 million. This certainly has a profound impact on fertility.
