[HN Gopher] NIH-funded research to address rising male infertility
___________________________________________________________________
NIH-funded research to address rising male infertility
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 73 points
Date : 2021-09-16 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.cornell.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.cornell.edu)
| dilap wrote:
| Exhibit A:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32504693/
|
| Exhibit B:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3076650/
| GDC7 wrote:
| Testosterone levels are plummeting as well:
|
| https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-s...
|
| More generally risktaking is down across the board.
|
| Cigarette smoking, stimulants, party drugs use, alcohol, sexual
| intercourses are also in a freefall compared to the 80s.
|
| As always people laughed at Japan, first it was Japan's economy,
| then its social trends, finally its sexual trends...
|
| But make no mistake, that's where we are headed. The future
| belongs to Africa and partially South America.
|
| Men are made to be dumb, reckless and horny, the moment they
| become cerebral, emotional and scared that's the signal that
| society is on the brink of collapse.
|
| We are in uncharted territory, men never behaved like they are
| now in the whole history of the human specie
| manachar wrote:
| > Men are made to be dumb, reckless and horny, the moment they
| become cerebral, emotional and scared that's the signal that
| society is on the brink of collapse.
|
| This statement is wholly unsupported by history or science.
| user-the-name wrote:
| It is also a favourite far-right bit of ideology.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Given the prevalence of armed conflict in human history, I
| have trouble agreeing that OP's statement, even if did in
| jest, isn't supported by history.
|
| It takes a whole lot of dumbness and recklessness to enter
| wars.
| watwut wrote:
| That is because when you look closely at factors that led
| to those wars, you find people reacting on self interest in
| situations where going to war is has high chance of being
| beneficial to them.
|
| It is easy to create slogans and such. But real history
| when you look at it is not as simple as dumb guys being
| dumb.
| fallingknife wrote:
| "History" could be renamed "men acting dumb, reckless, and
| horny" and it would basically be accurate.
| GDC7 wrote:
| Past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes.
|
| We are quite literally watching Japan disappear in front of
| our eyes.
|
| The West is about to start contracting as well.
|
| The only areas which are growing are India, Africa and South
| America.
|
| The future can't be bright when you inesorably shrink day
| after day.
| ssully wrote:
| If past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes
| than why did you reference history(the past) in your last
| point to reinforce what you think will be happening in our
| future?
| meetups323 wrote:
| It's a fair characterization of the mouse utopia experiments
| of John B. Calhoun, modulo some anthropomorphism.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28555652
| moussrr1 wrote:
| Those "experiments" have long since been recognized as
| broken and invalid. The mice were severely overcrowded,
| because Calhoun didn't actually understand the animals'
| need for spread out, large territories, and was more
| concerned with churning out dozens of ridiculous mouse-
| panopticons.
|
| Mice have biological processes that are sometimes analogous
| to humans, making them useful for some forms of
| experimentation. Their social behavior is anything but
| human-like.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| There's no evidence that japan has lower testosterone than an
| average country. The only study I could find suggested it had a
| higher average than the US.
| satellites wrote:
| That supports what others have commented, which is that
| obesity is likely the main culprit, at least in terms of low
| testosterone. The US has a much worse obesity problem than
| Japan does.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It's consistent with the hypothesis, but way too general of
| a correlation to show causality.
| zinclozenge wrote:
| I don't see why, there's a physiological basis for it.
| It's well known that fat cells have higher level of
| aromatase which converts testosterone to estradiol.
| aantix wrote:
| Is there a cheap way to measure ~ Testosterone levels?
| elzbardico wrote:
| In the normal world, it is a very cheap lab exam. In the US
| probably it costs 10x what it costs in any other place.
| satellites wrote:
| As others have said: sedentary lives in front of screens,
| declining nutrition and rising obesity are all culprits.
| Western media loves to gawk at Japan from a cultural
| perspective but I would be careful about drawing social
| parallels there. It's easy to cherry-pick social trends to
| confirm bias one way or another. But the physical and material
| conditions people live in are very tangible and demonstrably
| unhealthy.
| [deleted]
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| This comes up every now and then, and I take a look at some
| research and it always seems pretty clear that it's obesity.
|
| edit: the phthalates comes up every time. Yeah it does seem to
| have some effect, but the effect sizes found in papers doesn't
| seem to be that huge, meanwhile the effect size of obesity is
| very large, and the prevalence of it is observably growing
| rapidly. You also have to consider that the people with the most
| bioaccumulant shit like this are the people with large reserves
| of fatty tissue to absorb it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It seems like a combination of issues.
|
| The obesity thing tends to hold across many other species too.
| I would guess you are right about this being the main driver. A
| classic example would be dealing with animal husbandry and
| obese pigs. Fertility in obese females can be impacted too.
|
| A variety of toxins have been shown to cause fertility issues
| too, such as lead and pesticides. It's also possible that
| estrogen and estrogen mimicking compounds found in drinking
| water could fall into this category (estrogen can adversely
| affect male fertility).
|
| Testoterone is also a factor which has seen a large decline
| over the last 50 years. Obesity and sedentary lifestyle can
| cause a decline in testorerone and other hormones/enzymes
| related to sperm.
|
| Then there's a possible link to RF reducing sperm quality.
| Although I think this is probably a secondary factor that might
| exacerbate the others.
| jxramos wrote:
| That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure the anatomy
| lines up. Like the mass of belly fat and fatty liver pressing
| down from above in upright humans resting on the pudendal
| artery wouldn't be the same as how the mass hangs on
| quadrupeds. This is an interesting line of thought too, like
| what organs get compressed under gravity from increased mass
| assuming it's primarily a mechanical problem.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not talking about anatomy, but rather physiology
| (obesity affects hormones related to sperm). Do you have
| some information to suggest this is an anatomical issue
| (other than sleep apnea) rather than physiological one?
| jxramos wrote:
| nothing specific other than speculating about hearing
| about stuff around that bottom part of the body: lower
| sperm count, slower bowel movements with constipation and
| stuff. I wonder if there's anything else anatomical down
| there that could potentially get disrupted from extra
| mass bearing down on it.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| If obesity it perhaps should be studied as a realtime pushback
| against modern diets by nature/natural selection, in reducing
| unhealthy people from the gene pool.
| elil17 wrote:
| An interesting series of articles that came up on HN a couple
| months ago makes the argument that both infertility and obesity
| arise from environmental contaminates (although not necessarily
| phthalates). Regardless of whether you agree with the arguments
| presented, I think it's really interesting to see just how
| complex of a problem it is to figure out what's going on.
|
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, if we control the epidemics of sedentarism and obesity
| doesn't follow, those complex causes may be worth investing
| on. But we have a very simple pair of problems (bad nutrition
| and sedentarism) that are able to explain more than all the
| obesity around without any need for a contributing cause.
|
| (Anyway, the odds that there isn't any contributing cause on
| the tons of changes we made on the world are pretty small,
| and it's important to study those for individual health. It's
| just for societal health that there's no mystery to solve.)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The second article in the series cites a 25% increase in
| calories consumed during the period where obesity is rising,
| but then tries to wave that away as inconsequential.
|
| It seems obvious that obesity is the result of the increased
| caloric intake with secondary effects from the increasingly
| sedentary lifestyles we all lead.
|
| Environmental toxins might play a tertiary role, but it's
| definitely the calories driving most of the obesity issue.
| Y_Y wrote:
| It does seem painfully simple that consuming more energy
| than you burn/excrete is going to turn you into a sink, and
| a lot of that surplus energy is going to be stored as fat.
| (And the opposite process applies when you consume less
| than you use.)
|
| Is this an oversimplification, or is the average
| education/propaganda/understanding so confused, and so
| overwhelmed with different nutrition ideas that the wood is
| being missed for the trees?
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I read that blog series and it makes a decent case that there
| is some environmental contaminant that matters (or a
| combination of several), but it can't be the whole story
| because things like gastric bypass definitely work. Also just
| from observing obese people eat it is clear that few of them
| eat in a way conducive to weight loss. Perhaps some
| environmental contaminant causes them to crave calorically
| dense, non-satiating foods, but that seems doubtful to me.
|
| Edit: The other thing I noticed when reading the series was
| that the author had a habit of discounting anything that
| refuted his thesis (calling it a minor effect and so forth),
| while giving greater credibility to similarly weak evidence
| for his theory.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't particularly buy it. Again, sure, maybe it has a
| statistically significant effect, but it is undoubtedly
| dwarfed by people chugging sugary drinks and being more
| sedentary. A casual search suggests sugar consumption has
| increased 9 fold since the 1800s and 2 fold since the 1900s.
| The poor in particular are cornered into purchasing sugary
| foods due to weird economics around corn subsidies. And what
| do you know? They're the fattest by far.
|
| If it were mostly environmental you'd see broader gains.
| variation. But in my little bubble in upper middle class
| Massachusetts, I don't know ANYONE who is obese. In other
| areas of the country it's hard to find anyone who isn't.
| atom_arranger wrote:
| The linked site does suggest a reason Massachusetts would
| have less overweight people, based on their exposure to
| environmental contaminants.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Sure. But you'll find plenty of fat people in poorer
| areas of massachusetts.
| orwin wrote:
| Maize fructose has probably a bigger effect than cane
| sugar, because it also hit poor populations.
| wyager wrote:
| There is probably some bidirectional causality between
| decreasing T levels and rising obesity.
| eloff wrote:
| I think that's pretty firmly established. It's also a leading
| cause of ED.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| So is circumcision.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Or perhaps the correlation between obesity and low fertility is
| not causation, obesity could very well be a symptom of whatever
| is causing it, alongside low fertility.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Obesity is fairly well documented to cause poor fertility in
| animal studies
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| If it truly is obesity at work, then the research will be
| buried.
|
| There are too many obese people...they could elect a President
| if they wanted. You can't offend them.
|
| The CDC director refuses to finger-wag at the US public even
| though there is a solid correlation between obesity and covid
| outcomes. Why can't we say this? No politician is willing to
| tick off the obese, that's why.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| Do you have any links? Offhand I would suspect exercise, but I
| guess that's hard to differentiate from obesity.
| supperburg wrote:
| People who eat meat and animal fat and cut out sugar report
| getting pregnant after years of not being able to. They also
| report iso-caloric weight loss, resolution of diabetes 2,
| thickening of hair and many other positive health heuristics.
| Obesity, diabetes and metabolic considerations are an absolute
| powder-keg of medical progress just waiting for mainstream
| acceptance
| watwut wrote:
| The people getting pregnant after eating meat are unlikely to
| be men.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| BPA/BPB in plastics is another source. Unfortunately, this one
| is basically unavoidable since even if one doesn't own any of
| those plastics at home, there's bound to be some food product
| that uses a plastic container. Even more so, we don't know
| anything about how long it takes to leach into the food, what
| plastics do/don't contain it, stuff like that.
|
| Plastics should just be banned from touching food entirely.
| pxeboot wrote:
| If you have running water in your home, every drop likely
| flows through hundreds of feet to miles of plastic pipe
| before you drink it. Even if you have a private well and
| copper plumbing, your pump and other components almost always
| contain plastic parts that make contact with the water.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I think it really depends on the food. Like processed or
| skinned meat absorbs more than seeds or dry food, frozen
| absorbs less, or something like that. I haven't read about it
| for a while but that's what I remember was kind of like the
| consensus about where to start looking into if it's feasible
| to ban BPA.
| vnjxk wrote:
| I always thought it was the rise of porn
| bobthechef wrote:
| That's ED.
|
| P.S. The use of "fertility" to describe men is weird and
| seems recent. Fertility is passive and receptive and thus
| better fits women (hence the use in agriculture to describe
| the earth). Virility is a better term because it is active.
| Some people seem to falsely claim that it doesn't refer to
| procreative or generative power, but it does as this entry in
| Etymology Online[0] shows (emphasis mine):
|
| "period of manhood," 1580s, from French virilite, from Latin
| virilitatem (nominative virilitas) "manhood," from virilis
| "of a man, manly, worthy of a man," from vir "a man, a hero,"
| from PIE root wi-ro- "man." Meaning _" power of procreation_,
| capacity for sexua[l] intercourse" is from 1590s; sense of
| "manly strength" is recorded from c. 1600.
|
| There's not much power to procreate if you have a low sperm
| count.
|
| [0]
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/virility#etymonline_v_30873
| orwin wrote:
| I think "lack of fertility" to design low sperm
| count/inviable spermatozoids is accurate. Lack of virility
| would be impossibility to use your own penis for different
| reasons. 10-8 year ago i knew a trans who was fertile and
| could give sperm to her lesbian friends, but lacked
| virility.
|
| The female counterpart of virility should be femininity.
|
| DNA and knowledge of the specific of procreation is
| probably as recent as the use of fertility.
|
| Wanted to comment about obesity but i guess most people
| said what i wanted to say, so i'm rebounding on a tangent
| for my own self-esteem, sorry.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Technically you're right.
|
| But If I was a researcher, I would stay clear of using a
| term that could be understood as some kind of endorsement
| of toxic masculinity, heteronormativity or whatever.
|
| Better to use the slightly less accurate term, overloading
| its original meaning with a new one, and avoid being the
| subject of a witch hunt.
| slothtrop wrote:
| you're thinking of ED
| uuddlrlr wrote:
| Why would that increase infertility?
| blix wrote:
| From a purely observation perspective, pornography
| consumption has increased dramatically at the same time as
| falling fertility. Even if a mechanism isn't obvious, it at
| least seems like there is a possibility of a connection.
|
| Studies have indicated that long-term pornography use
| correlates with erectile dysfunction and loss of interest
| in sexual relationships. It's not hard to imagine that
| fertility might be related to these other aspects of
| reproductive health. Unfortunately few long-term studies
| seem to focus on fertility specifically.
|
| Short term studies on the influence of porn find that novel
| sexual stimulus seems to increase sperm quality while it
| attenuates in response to repeated exposure to the same
| stimulus. This is bad news for real life humans who cannot
| change as rapidly or dramatically as one can switch videos.
| macksd wrote:
| None of these things is infertility directly, but they
| might be what the parent comment is thinking of. I hear of
| links between ejaculation and prostate health a lot, but
| that's usually a positive relationship. Sex therapists that
| I read do seem to universally deny any link between
| moderate to excessive masturbation and impotence. There are
| correlations between ED and the rise of Internet porn
| usage, but that also correlates with the availability of
| medicines to treat ED and thus the marketing of a solution
| to a problem.
| elzbardico wrote:
| The lower cost of sexual release in porn leading to less
| motivation to pursue relationships with the opposite sex,
| an activity which in our current state of reproductive
| preferences, moral values and technology is strongly
| correlated with instances of human reproduction.
| wsc981 wrote:
| _> Why would that increase infertility?_
|
| Indeed ... wasn't it supposed to cause blindness?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I thought I remember reading it is dropping across the line,
| including for fit and healthy individuals. Is that not right,
| and if it is, what could that mean?
|
| Sorry for lack of source, it's not my area.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I can recall only one article that was posted here which
| included that, but I came away thinking it was misleading. It
| binned weight categories(e.g. BMI ranges from X-Y) and showed
| that over time, people were falling into heavier categories,
| and that sperm outcomes were getting worse in every category
| (heavily in the obese, less so in the normal weight range).
| But if you eyeballed the curve it felt very likely that the
| distribution of individuals was just shifting the the heavier
| end within each category.
|
| E.g. if a healthy BMI is 18-25, and you look at the the
| average outcome for that group over time... if the whole
| population gets fatter then the mean value in the 18-25 group
| could shift from 20 to 22. So... take it as you will. Sorry
| for no source here either.
| meetups323 wrote:
| We're in a Utopia. Utopias destroy purpose. Without purpose
| intelligence can not exist, so the rate of apoptosis surpasses
| the rate of reproduction. Obesity is a symptom of this, not the
| cause.
|
| This is Universe 25:
|
| > According to Calhoun, the extinction consisted of two stages:
| the "first death" -- characterized by the loss of purpose in life
| beyond mere existence (including the loss of desire to mate,
| raise young, or establish a role within society) -- and "second
| death" marked by the literal end of life and the extinction of
| Universe 25.
|
| > "Males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically; they
| became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the
| center of the floor of the universe. From this point on they no
| longer initiated interaction with their established associates,
| nor did their behavior elicit attack by territorial males," read
| the paper. "Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and
| much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn
| males."
|
| https://historyofyesterday.com/the-horrifying-study-that-pre...
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I don't think we're in a utopia. Most people do have food,
| comfort, and safety. But most don't have much free time (jobs),
| good relationships, clean air, and an overall lack of stress
| (plenty of things to worry about). Maybe we live in a society
| like Universe 25, but it isn't a utopia.
|
| Life is better than it used to be, but it's far from perfect.
| moussrr1 wrote:
| The "study" is horrifying because the mice were severely
| overcrowded, and suffered some extreme psychological breakdowns
| as a result. Not because it can predict human behavior and
| socialization in any way. _2,200 mice_ stuffed in a 10 'x14'
| pen? It's insanity. It's not even possible to make an analogy
| for humans, because humans are fundamentally social, across
| individuals and family units and more, in a way that mice are
| not.
|
| It's ridiculous pseudo-science that's taken at face-value as
| presented by Calhoun only because it makes an empty clickbait
| article sound deep.
| scohesc wrote:
| I mean, it's been called "survival of the fittest" since as long
| as I can remember.
|
| It's still turning out to be true, even with all our 21st century
| medical knowledge of science. Healthy at every size? Not if you
| want to procreate!
|
| It's weird. I absolutely love the feeling of "I knew this was
| very likely true and didn't need a study to prove it" and have a
| study come out that proves my hunch was mostly correct or on the
| right path. Probably some kind of suuuper duper biased positive
| feedback loop but something like this just totally makes sense to
| me. If you don't take care of your body, then things are going to
| start breaking down earlier than expected.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| So say the NIH finds that some compounds in our environment that
| get in our bodies are causing this. Leeching from plastic food
| containers, chemical pesticides, soy, whatever it is. What do you
| think is going to happen? The government is almost certainly not
| going to destroy it's chemical or agriculture industries to
| prevent this. No matter the findings nothing will come of it.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| It's easy to say that but look at the reduction in smoking over
| the last 20 years... it was unimaginable that the government
| would crack down and actively reduce smoking and cigarette
| accessibility and advertising but it did once the magnitude of
| the harm was recognized and accepted.
| giantg2 wrote:
| For people interested in knowing (roughly) their own sperm count,
| you can use a hemocytometer and a cheap ~600x microscope (like
| the kid science kit ones) to measure your own. It's basically
| measuring overall volume, putting some on the slide, and counting
| so many squares. Then multiple that count to get to the 1ml
| volume based on the volume of the squares and them multiple by
| overall number of ml. And paying attention to how many are moving
| vs not to get an idea of motility.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Would have appreciated if they had included references to
| credible work that shows "Male infertility is on the rise" &
| "significant declines in sperm quantity and quality occurring
| across the human population worldwide in the past two decades"
| rather than taking it as an accepted fact.
| tomlue wrote:
| See Shanna Swan and the Count Down book. This effect is already
| established, many of the mechanisms are established, science is
| discovering more mechanisms, but we already know enough to
| start taking public health actions.
|
| The epi evidence is clear and the mechanisms behind several
| exposure like phthalates have been established in animal
| studies and human epidemiological studies.
|
| notable are:
|
| 1. The question of declining sperm density revisited: an
| analysis of 101 studies published 1934-1996.
|
| 2. Environmental phthalate exposure in relation to reproductive
| outcomes and other health endpoints in humans
| nradov wrote:
| There is some evidence that endocrine disruptor chemicals such as
| phthalates (plastic softeners) are causing at least part of the
| problem.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/02/27/falling-sperm...
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Anyone know of any water filters that remove phthalates/PFAS?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Generally a good activated carbon filter will get most of it.
| If you're feeling particularly paranoid, a reverse osmosis
| filter will produce extremely clean water. So clean that
| there are disagreements about whether it will actually leach
| some of the salts and minerals back out from your body.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not sure of a specific one. I think RO removes it. Also, I
| think NAS has started certifying filters that remove PFAS.
| You can test your water for PFAS to see if you need one too.
| Sometimes the source of PFAS is from ones own plumbing and
| not the supply (if your supplier has a test that has lower
| levels than your home).
| sneak wrote:
| Seems like the problem will solve itself in a few generations.
| bdamm wrote:
| How so? By only breeding humans that are resistant to these
| disruptors? Cue social catastrophe..
| nisegami wrote:
| In order for it to be a problem, there needs to be people
| around to be affected.
| orwin wrote:
| Peak conventional was 2008, it's hard(er) to make plastic
| from non-conventional oil, and plastic from plant don't
| need phtalates (at least PLA doesn't, i know there is other
| kind of plastic but i don't know about them).
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I don't understand how that would be a catastrophe. Similar
| things have happened in the past (e.g. lactose tolerance in
| some populations)
| shahdi04 wrote:
| Pthlates and other micro plastics do increase estrogen
| production in both men and women
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Nicki Minaj has some contacts [1] she'd like to introduce to NIH
|
| [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/nicki-minaj-will-
| tal...
| cs702 wrote:
| The opening paragraph reads like something straight out of
| "Children of Men"[a]:
|
| > Male infertility is on the rise, with significant declines in
| sperm quantity and quality occurring across the human population
| worldwide in the past two decades. The reason for this is poorly
| understood, but scientists suspect ...
|
| Hmm...
|
| [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-09-16 23:02 UTC)