Smoking Risks Your Sperm, Says Study

Smoking not just damages your lungs but also unwittingly lowers your sperm quality, according to a new study. The researchers included 20 nonsmoking men and 20 smokers and found that the sperm of smokers has a greater extend of DNA damage than that of non-smokers. Cigarette smoking may promote an inflammatory response in the male reproductive tract.

"More and more studies are demonstrating a harmful effect of smoking on male fertility. Our results point in the direction of important semen alterations: semen of smokers presents an inflammatory nature, associated with decreased capacity of sperm to achieve fertilization and generate a healthy pregnancy," said senior author Dr Ricardo Pimenta Bertolla. Bertolla added that in the study, sperm DNA fragmentation was increased. Other studies have proposed this to be a potentially promutagenic effect, which is to say that sperm with altered DNA may lead to health problems in the offspring. The study appears in BJU International.