It was thought that the opposite worked
As researchers found that sperm deteriorates over time as it remains in the body, men are now encouraged to have more frequent ejaculations, which may boost their fertility.
According to researchers, the longer men went without sex, the more their sperm showed signs of DNA damage and oxidative stress, and the more tests rated the sperm as less viable and poorer swimmers.
It is also suggested that if doctors want to collect the best quality sperm, men should probably not abstain from ejaculating for several days as guidelines suggest.
“In men, the negative effects we found on sperm DNA damage and oxidative damage were large-ish, so we are confident that this is a biologically meaningful and important effect,” said Dr Krish Sanghvi, a biologist at the University of Oxford and lead author on the study.
A meta-analysis combined 115 human studies involving nearly 55,000 men, and 56 studies that looked at the impact of sperm storage in 30 non-human species.
Sperm tended to deteriorate while it was stored in males, regardless of the male’s age, in humans and other animals.
As per the World Health Organization, it is recommended that men abstain from ejaculating for two to seven days before giving sperm for fertility tests or IVF.
However, the guidelines were designed to obtain the highest sperm count rather than prioritising the best quality sperm.
That decision may now become more nuanced.
“All we recommend is that clinicians and couples reconsider whether long abstinence is always good, because abstinence leads to deterioration in sperm quality,” Sanghvi said. Details are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“If sperm quantity is the only thing that matters for a clinic or couple, then sexual abstinence is not necessarily a bad thing,” Sanghvi said. “But usually fertilisation success will be determined not only by how many sperm there are but the quality of the sperm too, for example in IVF.”
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