Eating soya could slash men's sperm count

Oct. 17, 2007 — -- Men who eat just half a serving of soya a day have drastically fewer sperm than those who do not consume such foods, according to a small, preliminary study.

The study's researchers say larger trials are needed to determine whether men hoping to conceive a child should try to avoid soya foods, such as tofu, tempeh and soya milk. However, soya industry representatives caution that the new findings contradict earlier studies that have shown no impact on sperm count from soya-based products.

Soya foods contain high amounts of isoflavones, compounds that mimic the effects of oestrogen in the body. For this reason, women sometimes increase their intake of soya foods to treat hot flushes caused by declining oestrogen levels in menopause.

Oestrogen-like compounds can also have a dramatic impact on the male body. And previous rodent studies have suggested that high intake of soya products can reduce male fertility. This has led scientists to wonder how isoflavones might influence men's reproductive function, which is highly sensitive to hormones.

Jorge Chavarro at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, US, and his colleagues identified 100 couples seeking treatment for infertility. Researchers asked the men to provide semen samples and complete a questionnaire about their intake of 15 soya-based foods such as miso soup, "power bars", and tofu over the preceding three months.

An analysis of the data, which controlled for factors such as age and weight, revealed that those men who consumed half a serving of soya-based food each day - about the equivalent of half a soya burger - had 65 million sperm per millilitre on average.

That is about 40 percent less than the typical sperm count of men who do not eat such foods -- normally between 80 million to 120 million sperm per millilitre. Men with counts lower than 20 million sperm per millilitre are generally considered infertile.

Chavarro presented the new findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Washington, DC on Monday.