Obesity May Deprive Men of Fatherhood

Rama Kant Mishra September 23, 2008

Men may lose the chances of being father if obesity is not checked. It does not matter even if he is healthy otherwise. This has been revealed by a new study. Researchers found that among 87 healthy men aged between 19 to 48, who were obesed were less likely to have ever fathered a child. Evidently, they showed hormonal differences that indicated a reduced reproductive capacity, the researchers report in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

As per the researchers, obese men had lower levels of testosterone in their blood compared with their thinner counterparts, as well as lower levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) both essential to reproduction. These relatively low levels of LH and FSH are suggestive of a "partial" hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. This is a condition in which the testes do not function properly due to signaling problems in the hypothalamus or pituitary gland, two brain structures involved in hormone secretion.These findings suggest that obesity alone is an "infertility factor" in otherwise healthy men, as reported by Dr. Eric M. Pauli and his colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey.

Pauli's team found that the average body mass index, or BMI, was lower among the men who had a child compared with those who'd never fathered a child. The group whose average BMI was 28, falls into the range for "overweight," while the average BMI for childless men was nearly 32, which falls into the "obese" range. Furthermore researchers found that the more obese a man was, the lower was his LH and FSH levels. On the other hand, increasing obesity correlated with increasing estrogen levels.

Earlier studies have also linked obesity with a dampened libido and increased risk of erectile dysfunction, the researchers note. Those effects, along with the hormonal alterations seen in this study, could act together to decrease an obese man's chances of being a father.