The objective of a new study conducted by scientists in Denmark was to establish the connection between sperm quality and alcohol consumption in men. The research was conducted as part of an assessment process where military recruits were subjected to medical examinations that evaluated physical fitness.
During the study, men were asked to detail the amount of alcohol that they consume at specific periods of time prior to the examination. Drinking habits were also established, where subjects were asked if drinking was habitual, how many times they engaged in binge drinking, or if they had become drunk in preceding months. In relation to this, semen samples were collected to check the quality of the sperm and blood samples to establish reproductive hormone levels.
Following the testing procedures, the data collected showed that there is no significant connection between sperm quality and recent alcohol consumption or binge drinking. However, lower sperm quality was recorded for subjects who drank regularly and in larger amounts. Drinking alcohol showed a notable association to changes in the levels of reproductive hormones in the blood, with the changes directly parallel to the amount of alcohol consumed. Researchers discovered that testosterone levels increased while the levels of SHBG, or sex hormone binding globulin, decreased.
No definitive conclusions have been gathered from this observational study and researchers emphasized that their findings may have also been influenced by reverse causation. This means that it could have been possible that male subjects who had poor sperm quality already had unhealthy lifestyle habits to begin with. A spokesperson for the research team said, "This is, to our knowledge, the first study among healthy young men with detailed information on alcohol intake, and given the fact that young men in the Western world [drink a lot], this is of public health concern, and could be a contributing factor to the low sperm count recorded among [them]."