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Dr Suks Minhas
London Andrology
What are the causes of male infertility?
Dr Suks Minhas, Consultant Andrologist and Urologist and renown male fertility expert talks through all the different possible causes of male infertility. These causes can range from DNA fragmentation and sperm damage which can result from environmental and lifestyle factors. Other causes include structural abnormalities within the male sexual organs such as varicoceles and varicose veins in the penis and previous surgery or drug treatments such as radiotherapy or hormone therapy.
Transcript
There's a large number of causes for male infertility. Some of those causes are unknown or unexplained, but we're now beginning to understand that even those causes that were originally thought to be unexplained, may be due to problems such as DNA fragmentation or damage to sperm DNA, which might be either due to environmental factors, diet, smoking, alcohol, for example, or alternatively due to problems such as varicosis or varicose veins of the testicle. The commonest causes, in terms of surgical causes that we deal with, are either previous surgeries in the past, patients who've had chemotherapy, radiotherapy in the past which damages the testicles. Alternatively, patients may have had a history of trauma to the testicles as well. So there are a variety of causes. Some of these causes also include drug therapy, patients who may be on hormone therapy, and in particular, patients who may have had or taken anabolic steroids or testosterone. So there are many causes. The two common causes which can be devastating, of course, is something called azoospermia or no sperm in the ejaculate for which the causes there are either of blockage or the testicles may not be working properly which are respectively called obstructive and non-obstructive azoospermia.