Originally published October 18 2005
New research reveals impact of smoking on men's sexual health
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Research funded by Philip Morris' External Research Program has found that heavy cigarette smoking in men can reduce sperm count considerably, jeopardizing a man's reproductive capabilities.
Sperm from nearly two-thirds of the chronic smokers in the study failed a special test that measures the ability of sperm to fertilize an egg.
On average, those men showed a 75 percent decline in fertilizing capacity when compared to nonsmokers.
"Like other cells in the body, human sperm carry a receptor for nicotine, which means they recognize and respond to nicotine," said lead researcher Loni Burkman, Ph.D, associate professor and head of the Section on Andrology, Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
"This happens because nicotine from tobacco mimics one of the most important neurochemicals produced in the body.
"Using sperm of nonsmokers, we reported previously that the addition of nicotine changed three sperm functions required to fertilize an egg.
"In this new study, we examined whether sperm from chronic tobacco smokers are defective in binding to the zona, the cover surrounding an egg," said Burkman.
The study involved 18 men who reported smoking at least four cigarettes a day, every day, for more than two years.
Their sperm function was compared to that of non-smoking donors who served as controls and whose fertilizing capacity had been confirmed.
Using a test called the Hemizona Assay developed by Burkman, the researchers cut a zona in half, placing one half with a smoker's sperm and the matching half with control sperm.
"To fail, the index must be less than 65, meaning that the smoker's sperm had less than 65 percent of the fertilizing capacity found in the donor," Burkman said.
As another way to understand the impact of smoking, the researchers calculated a "smoking load" for each smoker by multiplying the number of cigarettes smoked per day by the number of years smoked.
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