Researchers in Denmark have confirmed that poor semen quality, rather than low quantity, poses a significant risk to men’s life. Their findings come from the largest study ever conducted on the subject.



The difference might be slight, about two to three years, but the lower the semen quality, the lower the male’s life expectancy, research says.



Building on previous research that hypothesized a connection between the two, lead researcher Dr. Lærke Priskorn stated in a press release that they decided to test this theory and assess whether semen quality can predict a man’s lifespan and serve as a potential new entry point for early disease detection.



A new diagnostic route: semen



Called “a landmark study” from Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, researchers conducted a broad and comprehensive survey of 78,284 men who had their semen quality assessed over a 50-year period, from 1965 to 2015, due to couple infertility.



With that large of a dataset, they could study semen quality in depth, which included “semen volume, sperm concentration, and the proportion of sperm that were motile and a normal shape.”



During the follow-up, they could access this data to evaluate the cause of their deaths. There had been 8,600 mortalities by that point, representing 11% of the whole. A portion of this group, however, donated sperm at a later timeframe, between 1987 and 2015, as more information about the men became available.



After crunching all those numbers together, researchers identified a clear difference between the men with a low-quality and those with a healthier profile.



“Men with the best quality could expect to live two to three years longer, on average, than men with the lowest semen quality,” Priskorn said.



“In absolute terms, men with a total motile count of more than 120 million lived 2.7 years longer than men with a total motile count of between 0 and 5 million. The lower the semen quality, the lower the life expectancy. This association was not explained by any diseases in the ten years before semen quality assessment or the men’s educational level.”



And if semen already presents itself as a factor, what could it tell us about a man’s overall health?



The University of Copenhagen effectively found another access point to preventative measures that could lengthen a man’s life.



Linking semen quality to lifespan



Dr. Niels Jørgensen, chief andrologist at Copenhagen University Hospital explained that this study only reflects the beginning of this work.



“We need to better understand the association between semen quality and men’s general health. However, this study suggests that we can identify subgroups of men with impaired semen quality who are apparently healthy when their semen quality is assessed but who are at increased risk of developing certain diseases later in life.”



Men are evaluated as relatively young, he continued in the press release. As a practice, a boy’s fertility count is already being evaluated, so researchers have found another way that data can be useful in the long term.



Currently, researchers have not analyzed whether “poor semen quality was associated with earlier deaths from particular causes, such as cancer or heart disease.” That will be the subject in the future of this research.



“Using other groups of men, we will also try to identify relevant biomarkers that can identify subgroups of men at increased risk. This is key to initiating relevant prevention strategies.”



And they believe that oxidative stress might be the culprit.



“So perhaps, for both genders, the secret to achieving both high fecundity and heathy ageing, is to monitor oxidative stress and adopt measures to maintain a balanced redox state. Could it be that simple? Clearly, much food for thought,” Jørgensen concluded in the press release.



The study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction.

Better sperm, longer life? 50-year study of 80,000 men reveals longevity secrets