Does Size Matter When Trying To Get Pregnant

Pitiful guys, size DOES matter - at least when it comes to fertility

Measurements to worry about: A U.S. study has claimed that if men want to become fathers they should check the size of their AGD

Measurements to worry about: A U.Southward. report has claimed that if men want to become fathers they should bank check the size of their AGD

When it comes to male fertility, it turns out that size does thing. But non the measurement that about men worry virtually.

The dimension in question is a measurement known equally anogenital altitude, or AGD.

The shorter the AGD, the more than likely a man was to have a depression sperm count, a U.S. study has shown.

Men whose AGD is shorter than the median length - around two inches - have 7 times the hazard of being sub-fertile equally those with a longer AGD, according to the study published on Friday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

That distance, measured from the anus to the underside of the scrotum, is linked to male person fertility, including semen volume and sperm count, the written report found.

'Sub-fertile' ways that a man has a sperm count of less than 20 million per millilitre. By enquiry has shown that men in this category have nigh one-half the gamble of conceiving as do men with normal sperm counts.

Co-ordinate to study author Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, the new finding offers the prospect of a relatively simple fertility screening test for men.

'It's non-invasive and anybody can do it, and it's not sensitive to the kinds of things that sperm count is sensitive to, like stress or whether you lot accept a common cold or whether it's hot out,' Swan said in a phone interview with Reuters.

'If somebody's got a short AGD, particularly if they have issues conceiving, I would say get to the infertility doctor, considering the chances are good that something is wrong.'

But Dr Natan Bar-Chama, who heads the male reproductive medicine at Mount Sinai Infirmary in New York, stressed that the study was the first of its kind in humans.

'Cess of AGD as a routine evaluation of ane'due south fertility is premature,' Bar-Chama, who wasn't involved in the study, told Reuters Heath.

To reach their conclusions, researchers measured the AGDs of 126 men born in or after 1988, a pocket-size only statistically significant sample, Swan said.

The study did not accost what might cause certain men to accept curt AGD measurements.

But previous studies, published in 2005 and 2008, looked at the possible link betwixt mothers who were exposed to chemicals chosen phthalates during pregnancy and the AGD of their infant and toddler sons.

Phthalates are a group of chemicals widely used in industrial and personal care products, including fragrances, shampoos, soaps, plastics, paints and some pesticides.

In these earlier studies, the scientists tested for the presence of phthalates in the pregnant women'due south urine.

They found that women who had loftier levels of phthalates in their urine during pregnancy gave nativity to sons who were x times more likely to have shorter than expected AGDs.

Swan, who as well co-authored the earlier papers, said they showed the correlation between prenatal phthalate exposure and shorter AGD.

The latest study does not address prenatal phthalate exposure directly, 'only it does answer the question of why we should intendance well-nigh AGD,' Swan said.

'And it does advise that any is altering AGD is also altering sperm count.'