Podcast: Antioxidants for male subfertility

As well as strategies that are focused mainly on the woman, interventions to help couples to become pregnant include some to directly help men who are subfertile and those targeting men where the couple has unexplained subfertility. One of the Cochrane Reviews with this focus on men looks at giving them oral supplementation with antioxidants, and new evidence was added to this in March 2019. We asked Rebecca Mackenzie ‐Proctor from the Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand to bring us to up-to-date..Many cases of male subfertility are thought to be due to the damaging effects of oxidative stress on sperm, with some estimates putting this as high as four in five men. Oxidative stress occurs when cells break down and release reactive oxygen species chemicals. This damages the sperm and its ability to fertilise an egg. One way that has been suggested to overcome it in men with low natural levels of antioxidants, is for them take these as supplements, and our review suggests that this might be helpful. This is similar to our 2017 Cochrane Review studying the effects of antioxidant supplementation for women, which also showed a positive association with increased rates of live birth or clinical pregnancy.The previous version of this review of antioxidants for men was published in 2014 and this update has allowed us to add in a further 13 studies. This means that we are now evaluating 61 randomised trials, with more than 6000 couples attending fertility clinics. We included trial...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news