Falling sperm counts in China may hurt effort to boost birth rate, statistics suggest
- Trends are in line with those in the developed world
- Critics discount research that suggests male infertility is increasing
Is China in the midst of a sperm crisis? New statistics strengthen a growing belief that Chinese men are joining the developed world in producing less sperm in their semen, a trend that raises questions about their fertility in a country that is trying to boost its birth rate.
At Shanghai-based Fudan University’s sperm bank, which opened in June, just 10 per cent of semen collected from over 100 donors aged under 35 met the bank’s quality standards, local media reported.
The quality drop was in evident at the 15-year-old Shanghai Human Sperm Bank at Renji Hospital, where 25 per cent of the semen taken from donors last year was acceptable, down from more than 40 per cent in 2013.
And the sperm bank at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing had fewer than 20 per cent of samples collected from September 2015 to May 2016 make the grade.
What’s happening in China seems to be in line with what researchers have found in the developed world. Last year, a study suggesting that sperm counts of men in Western countries had dropped by 50 per cent within nearly 40 years provoked heated global discussion.
A meta-analysis of more than 180 research papers published from 1973 to 2011 indicated a 52 per cent decrease in sperm concentration and a 59 per cent decline in total sperm count among men in North America, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.
