Alcohol during pregnancy affects fertility of unborn son: Study

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 29 2010

According to new research a mother drinking alcohol during pregnancy can significantly affect the fertility of her unborn male offspring. The Danish study involved 347 young men aged 18 to 21 and found that those whose mothers had drunk more than four drinks a week during pregnancy had one third the sperm levels compared to those whose mothers were teetotalers. These men were sons of the 11,980 women who were recruited in the Danish health survey between 1984 and 1987. According to experts in UK, alcohol may be one of the important factors contributing to other factors leading to infertility in these men.

The findings of the study were presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Rome. The researchers had divided the men into four groups:

• Those whose mothers drank nothing,Pre
• Those who had one to one and a half drinks a week
• Those who had two to four drinks a week
• Those who had more than four drinks a week.

Each drink was classed as a beer, small glass of wine or one measure of other spirits. Four drinks in the study were equal to around six UK units.

Results showed that men in the first group had an average of 40 million per milliliter sperm compared to 25 million/ml in those men in the fourth group. Normal range of sperm count is 20 to 40 million/ml. After considering other factors that can affect sperm levels like smoking, lifestyle and other illnesses, researchers found that average sperm concentration was 32% lower in the highest alcohol group than the abstinence group. Lower concentration of sperm makes conception difficult and often longer.

According to lead researcher Dr Cecilia Ramlau-Hansen, from Aarhus University Hospital, “If exposure to alcohol in foetal life causes poor semen quality in adult life, we would expect that populations with many pregnant women drinking, possibly heavily, in pregnancy would have lower fertility in comparison with populations where pregnant women do not drink.”

Expert speak

Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield said that this study supported the fact that there are factors right from intrauterine life that can affect sperm count. But he said that alcohol may not be the only culprit. He explained saying, “I don't think we can be certain that alcohol is necessarily the bad thing here - it could be a surrogate marker for something else - but clearly there is some kind of relationship…It needs following up but it might help us understand factors which affect testicle development in the womb.”