Diabetes and reduced fertility linked by study

A new study from Germany has revealed that reduced fertility has been linked with type 1 diabetes, with substantially less children being born to couples when one of the partners has the condition.
As there is not much information on the fertility of type 1 diabetics, especially for men, the cross-sectional research, which was published in the journal Diabetic Medicine, examined data on children of people with type 1 diabetes to assess the effect of parental diabetes on the age at onset of the condition.
The study, which involved nearly 700 adults with type 1 diabetes, looked at the number of children born to each family, as well as the gender of each child and whether there was any previous history of diabetes, comparing that data with general findings for the same area of Germany. They also compared births for the full lifespa, including those that occurred once diabetes had been diagnosed.
It was found that the overall fertility rate for women was 1.36 children while, for those women with type 1 diabetes, the rate dropped to 0.88. For type 1 diabetic men, the fertility rate was shown to be 0.65, and that a greater number of type 1 diabetic men had no children compared to their female counterparts.
The report stated that “Although we did not find a significant influence of paternal diabetes, our data for the first time suggest that, in addition to maternal type 2 diabetes, maternal type 1 diabetes may also lead to a later manifestation of type 1 diabetes.”