Saturday, February 21, 2015

Younger (sperm) is not always better

Many women going through infertility have secretly (or openly!) wished for younger eggs. Because even though financially, emotionally, etc. many of us were not ready to start trying to have kids until our 30s (or later), biology thinks we should have been doing it right after graduating from high school, when our eggs were as good as they were going to get.

Well, maybe that's true of eggs, but apparently sperm, like cheese and fine wine, do better with some aging. A new study found teenage fathers have an increased risk of having children with birth defects--their sperm have more mutations than fathers in their 20s and 30s:

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1803/20142898

Good to know.

No comments:

Post a Comment