Infertile Men at Higher Risk of Premature Death; Stanford Study Finds

Infertile men have higher chances of dying early, a new study has found.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, found during an eight-year study period that men who are infertile due to poor semen quality were twice more likely to die early than men with good semen quality.

The study was based on data from 12,000 men. The participants were aged between 20-50 years and had visited infertility clinics from 1989 to 2011. Researchers obtained data about semen quality of the men from these centers. Semen quality included information about sperm count, motility and shape.

A normal sperm has an oval head and a long tail, while a defective sperm has a large head or crooked tail. These abnormalities might hinder the sperm from penetrating the egg, according to the Mayo Clinic.

National Death Index and the Social Security Death index helped researchers monitor the participants' mortality rate during an eight-year period.

"We were able to determine with better than 90 percent accuracy who died during that follow-up time," Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD, assistant professor of urology. "There was an inverse relationship. In the years following their evaluation, men with poor semen quality had more than double the mortality rate of those who didn't."

No single defect in semen was tied to early death. Researchers found that a combination of abnormalities were associated with two times higher risk of early death than other men with no fertility issues.

Researchers accounted for other risk factors such as age and disease. "It's plausible that, even though we didn't detect it, infertility may be caused by pre-existing general health problems," Eisenberg said in a news release.

The study is published in the journal Human Reproduction.