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WASHINGTON: Eating or drinking a lot of products containing soy and
isoflavones can result in reduced sperm count among men, a Harvard
School of Public Health study has shown.
“There has been a lot of interest on whether
soy affects fertility because many studies in animals suggest that
this is the case, but there are very few studies in humans,” said
researcher and lead study author Jorge Chavarro.
“This only the third study to look at whether
soy food has a relationship with fertility in humans and the first
one to find an association in agreement to the animal studies.”
Soy contains isoflavones, an organic compound
that acts like female hormones and appears to impede a man’s
ability to produce sperm.
“Isoflavones are structurally similar to
estrogen and can mimic the action of estrogen in the body,” said
Chavarro.
“Soy is expected to have estrogen-like
activity in many organs and tissues which can be beneficial for some
things but it’s certainly not beneficial for sperm production, at
least that’s what animal models suggest.”
The study examined the soy intake of 99 men,
determined to be part of couples experiencing fertility
difficulties, over the course of three months.
“There was an inverse association between soy
food intake and sperm concentration that remained significant after
accounting for age, abstinence time, body mass index, caffeine and
alcohol intake and smoking,” the study noted.
Those who ate the most soy had 41 million sperm
per milliliter less than men who did not eat soy. An average man has
between 80 million and 120 million sperm per milliliter.
-- AFP
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