Diabetes in Men
Men too can experience infertility issues due to high glucose levels. For some retrograde ejaculation, where semen backs up into the bladder, making it impossible to get to the woman’s reproductive organs, becomes a problem, as does erectile dysfunction caused by both the diabetes itself as well as medications which may be used to control it.
Still, there is one, more dangerous reproductive side effect to diabetes in men: DNA damage. According to research released y Dr. Ishola Agbaje of the Reproductive Research Group at Queen’s University in Belfast, diabetes can and does cause serious DNA damage to sperm which can inhibit a pregnancy, live birth and even healthy, normal fetus. Among the results of the study include that:
•Diabetic men have much lower semen levels (just 2.6 compared to 3.3 ml in their non-diabetic counterparts).
•The nuclear DNA in diabetic man’s sperm cells was more (52 per cent versus 32 per cent).
•There were more deletions in the mitochondrial DNA of diabetic men’s sperm cells than those of the non-diabetic men.
•The mitochondrial DNA deletions in the diabetic men’s sperm cells ranged from 3 to 6 and averaged 4, while for the non-diabetic men it ranged from 1 to 4 and averaged 3.
What does all this mean? Simply put, a diabetic man who does not control his glucose levels has less of a chance of impregnating his partner and when he does the risk of miscarriage and deformities are much higher.
The following article comes from a Harvard Medical study:
■The risk for a child of a parent with type 1 diabetes is lower if it is the mother — rather than the father — who has diabetes. "If the father has it, the risk is about 1 in 10 (10 percent) that his child will develop type 1 diabetes — the same as the risk to a sibling of an affected child," Dr. Warram says. On the other hand, if the mother has type 1 diabetes and is age 25 or younger when the child is born, the risk is reduced to 1 in 25 (4 percent) and if the mother is over age 25, the risk drops to 1 in 100 — virtually the same as the average American.
■If one of the parents developed type 1 diabetes before age 11, their child's risk of developing type 1 diabetes is somewhat higher than these figures and lower if the parent was diagnosed after their 11th birthday.
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