low sperm count

A study created by a team of international scientists and published by Human Reproduction Update finds that sperm counts in males in the Western world may have dropped by over half in the last 40 years.

A survey of surveys, the report brought together over 185 studies conducted between 1973 and 2011, creating a compendium of tests of 43,000 males. By highlighting results from “Western” countries — including New Zealand, Australia and other developed nations with strong European heritages — researchers found that sperm counts fell from 99 million per ml in 1973 to 47.1 million per ml in 2011 within the relevant age cohort. That’s a decline of 52.4 percent or 1.4 percent every year.

Most interestingly, this precipitous decline was not found in non-Western nations or the developing world — though the authors acknowledged that lack of robust and broad testing in those areas may have skewed their results.

It’s a dramatic finding that highlights an ongoing trend that researchers and fertility experts have amplified repeatedly over the last […]