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LONDON – For men with fertility problems, some doctors are prescribing a very conventional way to have a baby: more sex.
In a study of 118 Australian men with damaged sperm, doctors found that having sex every day for a week significantly reduced the amount of DNA damage in their patients’ sperm. Previous studies have linked better sperm quality to higher pregnancy rates.
The research was announced Tuesday at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam.
Dr. David Greening of Sydney IVF, a private fertility clinic in Australia, and colleagues looked at 118 men who had damaged sperm. Greening and colleagues told the men to have sex every day for a week. After seven days, the doctors found that in 81 percent of the men, there was a 12 percent decrease in the amount of damaged sperm.
Many fertility experts suggest men abstain from sex before their partners have in-vitro fertilization, to try to elevate their sperm counts.
Sperm quality can also be improved if men don’t smoke, drink moderately, exercise, or get more antioxidants.
Since concluding the study, Greening says he now instructs all couples seeking fertility advice to start by having more sex. “Some of the older men look a little concerned,” he said. “But the younger ones seem quite happy about it.”
Experts think sex helps reduce the DNA damage in sperm by getting it out of the body quickly; if sperm is in the body for too long, it has a higher chance of getting damaged.
Some experts said that while Greening’s research is promising, it doesn’t prove that daily sex for men with fertility problems will actually produce more babies.
Greening said he and his colleagues are still analyzing the study data to determine how many women got pregnant.
“Looking at sperm DNA is just one part of the puzzle,” said Bill Ledger, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Sheffield, who was not connected to the research. “Maybe this will improve pregnancy rates, but we still need to do more studies.”
Ledger said instructing couples with infertility problems to have more sex could stress their relationship. “This may add even more anxiety and do more harm than good,” he said. He said couples shouldn’t feel pressured to adjust their sex lives just for the sake of having a baby.
Greening said the study’s findings were ultimately very intuitive. “If you want to have a baby, our advice is to do it often.”
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who suffer from depression after giving birth can often be helped with antidepressants, and when treatment is successful it usually improves sexual problems.
In the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Dr. Katherine L. Wisner, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pennsylvania, and colleagues report their assessment of sexual problems in women diagnosed with postpartum depression. The information was drawn from an 8-week study comparing the antidepressants nortriptyline (for example, Sensoval, Aventyl) and sertraline (Zoloft, Lustral) for postpartum depression in 70 women.
At the start of the study, 73 percent of women reported problems in at least three areas of sexual function. By week 8, this number had fallen to 37 percent, and women whose depression resolved were more likely to report fewer concerns about sex drive, sexual arousal, and reaching orgasm than those whose depression did not remit, regardless of which antidepressant they received, according to the researchers.
The investigators point out that for new mothers with depression and sexual problems, prior research has shown that recovery depends not only on relieving the depression but also on the time it takes for tissues around the vagina to recover from the stress of childbirth.
In the current study, however, the decrease in sexual concerns was specifically linked with improvements in depression rather than with the passage of time, according to the article.
The lack of a specific association with either nortriptyline or sertraline suggests that it does not matter how the depression is addressed, only that it is relieved, the authors note.
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, March 2009.
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