Can low sperm count be cured?

Depending on what the root cause of the low sperm count or low motility in a sperm is, then the answer is – yes. In some cases when the root cause is not severe or it is treatable then it can be treated, in other cases, there may have to be medical intervention in order to help and improve the sperm quality and count. So, if the sperm is borderline on count or motility and there is no severe root cause for it, the lifestyle changes can actually help, for example, giving up smoking, not having alcohol, exercising, balancing the body weight so, not being too overweight, not being underweight, if there is hormonal imbalance that can easily be sorted with medication – all of this can help to balance the production of the sperm and produce better quality sperm and higher number. So it can be easily treatable. Other causes of male infertility due to lower sperm count or motility or normal forms, can also be treated but may need to have more medical intervention.

The evidence is not conclusive one way or the other. We would just recommend a healthy lifestyle: cut out smoking, no drugs and cut down on caffeine, normal exercise and stress normal exercise (not going on thermal bike rides and getting your body temperature up). That’s the best thing sort of, multivitamins – things like that and just see how it goes. It could just be that it’s one of those things. Unfortunately male factor infertility is treated by treating the female patient – you’re treated as a couple so the way to do it is, to do an ICSI cycle. There’s no other hard or set fast rule as to how to treat men with a borderline low sperm concentration and how to improve it. It’s a very underfunded and under researched area.

Our tools are therapeutic options nowadays to improve sperm count when the diagnosis is oligospermia are very limited. Normally, there have been a number of pharmaceutical approaches with very limited outcomes. What we do when we have a case of oligospermia is to refer the patient to an expert urologist or andrologist in an effort to identify whether there are any reversible causative factors such as a medication, a previous history or varicocele. In case of varicocele a repair of varicocele may produce an improvement in the sperm. Other than that, the other options is to improve lifestyle habits and increase the intake of vitamins in form of supplements special formulas for improving fertility and increase sport activity, quit smoking and improve BMI index and all of these have shown to have a positive, most of the times, a positive impact on the sperm quality overall. So, I would advise these men to undergo this medical assessment, to take all the steps necessary and check again. If the sperm is still low, which is unfortunately a possible outcome, then they should resort to one of the assisted reproductive techniques as soon as possible.

Well, sperm quality is a funny thing – the quality of sperm will change on a day by day basis and studies have shown this but if you’re looking for consistent trends, well, I think the evidence isn’t always massively convincing that lifestyle interventions make a huge improvement but certainly, if you’re a bit overweight, getting regular exercise, a healthy diet, perhaps taking a well-manned supplement might all be things that could be considered. If you’re exercising excessively – just moderate it a little bit and certainly one thing we do warn patients about is if they’re taking anabolic steroids, gym supplements etc. – they should stop those all together because that’s certainly something that can have a profound impact on sperm quality that the patient can do something about. We also recommend that patients don’t smoke, don’t drink excessively and don’t use recreational drugs as these factors also can have an impact.

In our patients’ cases and from our 10 years of experience, 80 % of the DNA fragmented or low count because most of the low count spermatozoa from the husband usually showed a vast number of spermatozoa which means the fragmented material would be high. Then there are some multifactorial treatments where we use multivitamins and some other natural products for the cure and we’ve seen so far that the outcome of 80% of the sperm can be cured. That is a high percentage but the 20% is not cured, so we suggest immediately the technique of TESE. That means, they inject from the testicles genetic material – sperm and then they culture this and from the bibliography and the references that we have read many so far, we see a decrease of the DNA fragmentation and much quality of of the spermatozoa from about 15 to 20 % and all this recorded in in the international journals that the technic TESE when I have a problem with the DNA fragmented material, can help to decrease the DNA fragmentation and help the outcome of the IVF trial.

In order to cure sperm count, it is important to identify the reason why a person shows a low sperm count. One reason may be wrong habits and lifestyle such as smoking, abuse of alcohol, drugs or even treatment with specific medication such as testosterone replacement therapy or chemotherapy. All of these treatments can have an impact on semen quality and sperm count. It is possible to pollute and you should consider the presence of genetic conditions for example Klinefelter syndrome, varicoceles or testicular trauma. So once you identify the reason why a man shows a lower sperm count, you can consider a specific treatment for example, by modifying your lifestyle habits- no smoking or drinking, stop using drugs , consult a physician about the medication that you are taking, limit your exposure to pollutants, treat the medical condition if possible, for example, perform a varicocelectomy and you can also consider antioxidant supplementation.

Low sperm count is called oligospermia, it can be cured in some situations and in others – in the majority of them, no. In the cases where treatment is very gratifying, where there is an infection, we have excellent results when we give antibiotics and other treatments every time we detect the infection in the sperm. Another area where the treatment is very effective is when there is hypogonadism. Hypogonadism means a decrease of the hormones FSH and LH which are really the feeding hormones to the testicles. When the secretion of these hormones is insufficient and we come in with treatment by replacing the levels of these hormones then we get excellent results with excellent production of sperm which is normally fertile. Another big area where we always attempt to treat is the presence of varicocele. Varicocele is when the veins around the sperm are swollen and giving rise to an increased temperature around the sperm and the surgeons here try to reverse the swelling of the veins and some good results can be produced under certain conditions. The rest of the cases of oligospermia are not really susceptible to any treatment specifically, we do give various supplements agents such as antioxidants, vitamins, carnitine, etc. but none of them have been proven in studies to have a definitive impressive result successfully.