Punishing hot weather not only affects a person’s health or work productivity, but also affects couples’ fertility and birth outcomes, a project by the National University of Singapore has found.
The scientists then traced the men’s exposure to extreme heat – or when a day’s average temperature exceeds 29.8 deg C – by looking at weather records 90 days before they provided semen samples at NUH. “Conventionally, findings suggest that sperm quality decreases as one ages, but what we found in this study was that it was men in their reproductive time between 25 and 35 who were the most impacted by heat,” said Dr Gunther at a media briefing on March 18, where Project HeatSafe researchers gave a round-up of their projects.
The 818 sperm samples from NUS came from men who had issues with conceiving, and a smaller portion of them were patients undergoing chemotherapy who wanted to preserve their sperm.