December 12, 2019
Without understanding the biology of how normal sperm work
Infertility is a significant global health problem. Experts say the underlying
problem is in the male. Representational Image. (Photo: Pixabay) LONDON: They
can make test-tube babies, grow human eggs in a lab and reproduce mice from
frozen testicle tissue, but when it comes to knowing how a man’s sperm can swim
to, find and fertilize an egg, scientists are still floundering.
Enormous
advances in treating infertility in recent decades have helped couples conceive
longed-for offspring they previously would not have had. Yet this progress has
also been a work-around for a major part of the problem: Sperm counts are
falling drastically worldwide - and have been doing so for decades – and
scientists say their honest answer to why is: "We don’t knowâ€.
Infertility is a
significant global health problem, with specialists estimating that as many as
one in six couples worldwide are affected. In more than half of those cases,
experts say, the underlying problem is in the male.Most of the focus of
infertility research has been on women, however: on what can reduce their
fertility and on how that can be averted, compensated for or corrected with
treatment. While this approach has produced results - and babies - it has also
left male infertility scientifically sidelined.
Treatments such as in-vitro
fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where the sperm
is placed into the egg rather than next to it, bypass the male problem rather
than treating it, said Richard Sharpe, professor at the University of
Edinburgh’s center for reproductive health."The treatments - some of them quite
invasive - are to the female partner. So the female is having to bear the burden
of the male’s sub-fertility ...(And at the same time), we have a very crude
snapshot of what is going on in the male.â€We know that sperm counts are
dependent on high levels of testosterone, and there is some knowledge of links
between sperm count and infertility, experts say. But beyond these basics,
sperm’s intricacies remain largely undiscovered.
Without understanding the
biology of how normal sperm work, we can’t possibly understand how they don’t
work, or how to correct the problem,†Sarah Martins Da Silva, a reproductive
medicine specialist at the University of Dundee told a London briefing this
week.Sperm counts in men from America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand have
dropped by more than 50 percent in less than 40 years, according to pooled
research published last year, described by one of its authors as an "urgent
wake-up call†for further investigation.STILL IN THE 1950sExperts say that to
address the basic unanswered clinical and scientific questions in andrology -
the study of male reproductive health - would require research ranging from
large, ideally international, epidemiological studies to detailed lab work to
decipher exactly how sperm cells function. Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in
andrology at Britain’s Sheffield University, said even at a basic level - the
diagnosis of a possible male fertility problem - the science is lagging.The
techniques of sperm analysis - examining ejaculate under a microscope, counting
the sperm, assessing how well they swim, and seeing what they look like - were
invented in the 1950s, he said.
And we are still doing the same thing now.†So
while estimates suggest as many 1 in 20 young men now have sperm counts low
enough to impair fertility, that remains educated assumption, rather than data
from specific studies. "The quality of evidence we have got in this area falls
way behind that of other branches of medicine,†Pacey said.Attracting funding
for fundamental research into possible environmental impacts on sperm counts -
chemical exposure, for example, or smoking, obesity, or sport and exercise - is
tricky, partly because such studies need vast numbers of people, take many years
and may not give clear answers."In the competitive world of grant funding, there
is a view that male infertility is a problem solved,†Sharpe said.
We have
ICSI. OK, this doesn’t fix the problem in the affected men, but it treats the
‘symptoms’, and that’s good enough."So from an urgency China
automatic liquid soft packaging machines Suppliers and priority perspective,
it’s easy to downgrade when compared to cancer, obesity or cardiovascular
disease.â€Comprehensive European or global data on funding going to male
fertility research are not available, but in Britain, for example, only around
3.6 percent of the Medical Research Council Populations and Systems panel budget
was provided for male infertility research from 2014 to 2017. Pacey told Reuters
he has "a filing cabinet full of failed applications over the years†and Sharpe
noted that once research falls behind, future studies have less to build on. "If
you’re not producing sexy research that’s going to come up with a magic bullet,
then people are not going to give you the money,†he said.
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