Male Offspring of Assisted Reproduction Less Fertile
I was born in the wake of the DES prescriptions. My mom was certain that she did not take this pills while pregnant with me, though she says that she was taking many pills a day to try to prevent from miscarrying me. As I got older the studies came out about the compromised fertility of DES daughters. The guilt that these moms had was huge in all of the interviews that I read. But given the choice between being alive and being infertile, I would think that most women would choose their own life. Hopefully both the moms and daughters were able to come to terms with their situations.
I felt that the above article about sons being less fertile if they were conceived with ART and the studies about DES daughters were along similar lines. At least, the DES news was one of the first things I thought of while reading the study. Although we don’t want to hear this news it is good that we have it up front. I guess that this could be labeled under the heading of “Good To Know”. Although it isn’t great news to have, at least we know in advance to avoid the wasting of time if the son would like to have children in the future. And as most of us know, time is the one thing we really shouldn’t waste when it comes to creating our families.
After controlling for various potentially confounding factors, the researchers found that compared with the other men, those conceived with fertility treatment had a 46 percent lower sperm concentration, a 45 percent lower total sperm count, smaller testes, fewer motile sperm and fewer normal appearing sperm.
These men also had lower testosterone levels, but the difference was not statistically significant.
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