Has your wife experienced repeated miscarriages, especially within the first three months of pregnancy and you are still trying to achieve a pregnancy that she could carry to term?
As a man, if you answer an emphatic ‘yes’ to this question, it may be time to focus on yourself because, experts say, the repeated miscarriages — medically known as abortion — may be due to the fact that your sperm is defective. If this is the case, you need medical attention; otherwise, your desire to have a baby may be a mirage, especially if you are over 40 years of age.
Generally, physicians say between 20 and 30 per cent of all women spot, bleed or suffer cramps during their first 12 weeks of pregnancy, while about 10 per cent miscarry. Gynaecologists warn that a good number of women miscarry unknowingly, thinking that their period was late or heavy.
Though a woman may suffer miscarriage for many reasons, gynaecologists say the commonest reason for a first-trimester miscarriage is a genetic defect in the embryo. Experts say about three in every five early miscarriages are thought to be connected to foetal abnormality, which may have been as a result of abnormality with the woman’s egg or the man’s sperm.
The Medical Director of Nordica Fertility Centre, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, says the abnormality may be a combination of the problem with the man and the woman. He describes such miscarriages as the nature’s way of preventing the birth of a baby with a birth defect.
This genetic error is a random event which happens by chance, experts say; and it occurs because a genetically abnormal egg or sperm gets fertilised.
Having a miscarriage is an unpalatable experience; but when it happens repeatedly, it’s bound to have psychological and emotional effects on, not just the woman but her husband also. The situation is even worse if the couple has been trying for a child.
Ajayi says that though every woman has some chromosomally abnormal eggs and every man produces some chromosomally abnormal sperm, when a man has high volume of abnormal sperm, his wife may continue to experience miscarriages even if she has the best eggs in town.
“The quality of the man’s sperm can sometimes be the cause of recurrent miscarriages,” Ajayi warns; “hence the advice for men to do a sperm test to be sure.”
Beyond the problem of miscarriages which may deny couples the timely opportunity to raise a family of their own, experts say couples who have had regular unprotected sex for 12 months and have been unable to achieve pregnancy should ascertain that the man has not been firing blank sperms.
Ajayi notes that when a man is planning to raise a family, finding out that he is infertile can be a big shock to him. Yet, experts say, male infertility is much more common than we may think.
Physicians say if couples have been trying to conceive, it is no longer ‘fashionable’ to conclude that the woman is the cause of the problem, as the man may actually have zero sperm count.
Fertility specialists contend that about one in 20 men is sub-fertile; and male infertility may be significant in half of all infertile couples. “About one third of all in-vitro fertility procedures are performed for male infertility,” they note.
An online portal, abc.net.au, proffers that male infertility is diagnosed when tests have been done on both partners and reproductive problems are identified in the male partner.
“Those tests might include a physical examination and analysis of the man’s sperm, looking at their number, movement and shape. Doctors might also carry out blood tests to determine hormone levels, and do genetic investigations or testicular biopsies,” the portal says.
Ajayi adds that for roughly two-thirds of infertile men, those tests will reveal an underlying problem with the number, quality or movement of sperm. “In specific terms, such sperm lacks numbers, speed and the ability to engage,” he says.
Treatment options
Experts say though there are specific techniques that fertility specialists can use to combat male fertility issues, the best approach depends on the type of infertility and its severity.
Ajayi notes that one of such techniques which has been proved to work when tackling male fertility is the procedure called Intracytoplasmic Morphologically Selected Sperm Injection, aka IMSI.
The Nordica boss explains that IMSI is especially indicated in severe derangement in sperm parameters, and is therefore recommended for men with very low sperm count that is less than two million and with less than 20 per cent motility.
The process is also recommended for men whose partners have had recurrent abortions within the first three months of pregnancy. “This is to exclude the contribution of damaged sperm,” Ajayi explains.
Again, IMSI is recommended in a situation where the woman has had two failed cycles, and where the man has low rate of spermatozoa with normal nucleus.
Ajayi warns that ageing affects men, just as it does the women; and that by the time a man is 50 years old, he is likely to develop abnormal sperm. IMSI, he says, can save the day, as the technology enables the fertility specialist to “help” the man achieve what, otherwise, he might not, naturally.
And even where a couple has a good number of eggs but there is poor fertilisation, expert say, IMSI is the technology of choice because, “compared to its forerunners, it is the most effective treatment to date in tackling male factor infertility.”
Fertility experts enthuse that the IMSI technique involves selecting the best quality sperm cells from a sample provided by the male partner, and injecting them directly into the eggs retrieved from the female partner, thereby increasing the probability that these sperm cells will fertilise the woman’s eggs.
Indeed, a work by a group of seven researchers, published in the March edition of the Reproductive Healthjournal, states that several studies demonstrated that IMSI provides positive results in couples with severe male factor infertility or repeated Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) failures.
The study leader, Roberto Marci, notes that in a study of 332 couples where the cause of infertility was due to the male factor, “A trend towards better laboratory and clinical outcomes was detected in the male factor infertility subgroup when IMSI was applied.”
The researchers depose that this technology that is used in analysing sperm enables fertility specialists to effectively detect and bypass ‘deranged’ sperm. They are therefore able to fertilise a healthy egg with healthy sperm and thus enable couples to have children of their own.
Marci reveals that, “In the IMSI group, fertilisation rate and live birth rate were slightly higher and the miscarriage rate tended to be lower when compared to the ICSI group.
“This is because IMSI involves examining sperm under a high-magnification microscope — about five times more powerful than standard laboratory equipment — to select those with a shape and size that indicate good genetic quality. And it seems that this high-magnification technology really does work,” researchers affirm.
Again, in a study done by Italian scientists involving 446 couples, in which the male was infertile but the woman had no perceivable fertility problems, the pregnancy rate among the couples that used IMSI was 32.9 per cent, compared to 26.5 per cent among the couples who used ICSI.
The scientists report that men who have tried and failed to become fathers through at least two previous IVF attempts were twice as likely to succeed through IMSI than through another round of conventional fertility treatment.
Ajayi counsels men to realise the fact that it takes two to tango; and that they should not think that it is unmanly to seek fertility treatment when their wives have been confirmed fit to conceive yet can’t.
source(punchng)
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