Marijuana smoking linked to higher sperm concentration

Men who smoked marijuana at some point in their life are said to have a higher sperm concentration than those who have never touched the substance a new study claims.

The study, conducted in the Fertility Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, also found that there was no significant difference in sperm concentrations between current and former marijuana smokers.

Jorge Chavarro, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard Chan School:

These unexpected findings highlight how little we know about the reproductive health effects of marijuana, and in fact of the health effects of marijuana in general
Our results need to be interpreted with caution and they highlight the need to further study the health effects of marijuana use.

For this study, researchers collected 1,143 semen samples from 662 men between 2000 and 2017. On average, the men were 36 years old, and most were white and college educated. Additionally, 317 of the participants provided blood samples that were analyzed for reproductive hormones.

Among the participants, 365, or 55%, reported having smoked marijuana at some point. Of those, 44% said they were past marijuana smokers and 11% classified themselves as current smokers.

Analysis of the semen samples showed that men who had smoked marijuana had average sperm concentrations of 62.7 million sperm per milliliter of ejaculate while men who had never smoked marijuana had average concentrations of 45.4 million sperm per milliliter of ejaculate. Only 5% of marijuana smokers had sperm concentrations below 15 million/mL (the World Health Organization’s threshold for “normal” levels) compared with 12% of men who had never smoked marijuana.

The new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was published on February 5, 2019 in Human Reproduction.

With information for Medical Express