TORONTO- Being able to conceive a child is something our bodies are programmed to do. However, one in six Canadians have trouble conceiving. Often, it’s assumed infertility is a woman’s problem.
Or is it? More men aged 18 to 45 have infertility than diabetes.
Nicolas Ruszkowski is one of those men. Nicolas and his wife Amy have always dreamed of having a baby, but they didn’t think that their wish wouldn’t come true. That’s because Nicolas’s sperm count is extremely low, at about 2 million. The average, according to the World Health Organization, is 40 to 60 million per milliliter.
Red flags first went up in the 1990s on the possibility of sperm decline with the publication of a controversial Danish study that suggested that sperm count was declining at such a rapid rate that there would be little left in 50 years. Dr. Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City analyzed the data used in the Danish study and came up with the same results. Then she did studies of her own.
Swan looked at the sperm count of men in Missouri, New York, Minnesota and California and found that the men in Missouri had half the moving sperm as the men in Minneapolis. Last year, she looked at American university and college-aged males in Rochester, New York. The sperm count of some of these men, considered to be in their prime of life, was also low. Swan’s study showed 23 per cent of men had counts which could be grounds for seeing a fertility doctor.
Swan’s theory? It has to do with chemicals.
“There has been a huge hit of chemicals, there are 80,000 chemicals around, few have ever been tested,” said Swan. “There is no question that pesticides reduce sperm count. The question is how much do you need to do the damage?”
However, some scientists, like Dr. Bernard Robaire of McGill University, say it’s not the quantity, but rather the quality of sperm that matters. Urologists say there are cases where men with low sperm counts conceive children naturally, while those with higher counts, around 25 million, can’t conceive.
“If you have a few sperm and they’re very high in quality and the DNA is not broken,” said Dr. Robaire. “It’s able to fertilize and recognize the egg.”
Scientists may not be able to repair the damage, but they have found ways to get around infertility with fertility technologies. Researchers around the world are also trying to reach the holy grail in male infertility research – creating human sperm outside the body. Japanese researchers have succeeded with mice, creating the first mice pups born from sperm cells matured out the mouse body, which were also able to go on and reproduce themselves.
Many couples, like Nicolas and Amy, will go to any length, undergo any procedure to have a child. They were lucky on their first IVF attempt and are now expecting their first child conceived through infertility technologies.
In a special 16×9 investigation, Beatrice Politi speaks to men dealing with infertility – the struggles, the science and the risks to both father and child. The full hour-long 16×9 investigation will air this Saturday, February 11 at 7pm on 16×9. Join our live-blog discussion on globalnews.ca on Monday, February 13th at 7pm.
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