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Medicine Science

Men Are Affected By the Biological Clock As Well, Researchers Find (theguardian.com) 209

Posted by BeauHD from the family-planning dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new study reveals that a couple's chances of having a baby fall with the man's age, to the point that it can have a substantial impact on their ability to start a family. Laura Dodge, who led the research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, said that couples should bear the findings in mind when planning a family. "When making this decision, they should also be considering the man's age," she said. Scientists have long known that a woman's chances of conceiving naturally drop sharply from the age of 35, but fertility research has focused so much on women that male factors are less well understood. To investigate the impact of a man's age on a couple's chances of having a baby, Dodge and her colleagues studied records of nearly 19,000 IVF treatment cycles in the Boston area between 2000 and 2014. The women were divided into four age bands: those under 30, 30-35 year-olds, 35-40 year-olds, and those aged 40-42. The men were divided into the same age brackets with an extra band for the over 42s. Some of the couples had received up to six cycles of IVF. Dodge then looked at how age affected couples' chances of having a live birth. As expected, women in the 40-42 age bracket had the lowest birth rates, and for these women the male partner's age had no impact. But for younger women the man's age mattered. Women aged under 30 with a male partner aged 30 to 35 had a 73% chance of a live birth after IVF. But that impressive success rate fell to 46% when the man was aged 40 to 42. Whether they can hear it or not, the biological clock ticks for men too.
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Men Are Affected By the Biological Clock As Well, Researchers Find More

Men Are Affected By the Biological Clock As Well, Researchers Find

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  • Younger Sperm Donors (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @02:08AM (#54740411)

    Sooo, younger sperm donors are better, is the takeaway? I thought this was common knowledge.
    Usually, a prospective mother will want to use her partner's sperm for IVF, and won't say "I'm gonna use someone else's sperm because you're old so the chances of success are lower, sorry honey." even if that means higher cost for more rounds of IVF. If a woman has a partner 10+ years older than her, chances are he's rich enough to afford those extra rounds.

    • Re:Younger Sperm Donors (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BESTouff ( 531293 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @03:31AM (#54740643)

      If a woman has a partner 10+ years older than her, chances are he's rich enough to afford those extra rounds.

      I'm exactly 10 years older than my SO, that smart gorgeous girl and mother of my lovely daughter, and rest assured she didn't choose me for my wealth.

  • Someone will cash in on this soon.

  • Need more data (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @02:32AM (#54740487)

    Have we factored in lifestyle into this as well?

    Something tells me that men that do not smoke, don't indulge in alcohol often or at all and keep fit will have better results...(seems obvious right?)

    The men I know at those later ages seem to have given up on a healthy lifestyle at least in terms of fitness. Also family stress factors in.

    More data needed. Time to crowdfund a study on the subject?

    • More data needed. Time to crowdfund a study on the subject?

      You speak as if we actually need more humans on this rock.

      • More data needed. Time to crowdfund a study on the subject?

        You speak as if we actually need more humans on this rock.

        We don't need, in an existential sense, most of them but then we have an issue of never ending reducibility.

        You see, we can easily say that one in a billion humans is a waste of space. We can say that with ease about a single human in a million. Perhaps even one out of a thousand. We can carry along this line until we have to wonder who's left? -who the fuck cares about all the stuff that some scientists or "useful" people care about.

        We might end up with one very efficient autistic human that is entirel

        • Re:Need more data (Score:4)

          by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @06:07AM (#54740997)

          If men and women take better care of themselves at least in the first 30-40 years of their lives then they might have all that time for study and work to create that stable financial base without having to factor in serious fertility issues later.

          We can't even create a world that offers financial stability to the younger generation, and you want to demand personal responsibility for maintaining a good diet, an active lifestyle, and practicing safe sex 100% of the time? Understanding human behavior, I'd say there's exactly a fat fucking chance of that happening.

          Also, as an aside, we need to have loads more young people so they can work and pay off the wasteful ways of the previous few generations. Just a thought.

          Automation is going to destroy many of those jobs that young people rely on for employment, and remove their ability to climb the proverbial ladder and seek out educated positions. Imperfect AI that's merely good enough will destroy the concept of human employment altogether. Welfare 2.0 will encompass the globe in ways we cannot even fathom yet. In short, future generations won't be paying off jack shit. They will be consumers, just like the other 99.9% of the human race. Earth doesn't want or need more added to make the parasitic infection worse.

          • We can't even create a world that offers financial stability to the younger generation, and you want to demand personal responsibility for maintaining a good diet, an active lifestyle, and practicing safe sex 100% of the time?

            I'm not demanding nor am I suggestion everyone lives and dies by my beliefs. I am suggesting it would be beneficial to the people partaking in said activities.

            Automation is going to destroy many of those jobs that young people rely on for employment, and remove their ability to climb the proverbial ladder and seek out educated positions.

            Automation has been destroying jobs since the industrial revolution its just that the machines have become better. Very much like how some jobs become obsolete there will be need for other things. Something tells me that robotics engineers will become the new "mechanic" and so on.

            Just become some things are changing does not mean everything else is

            • We can't even create a world that offers financial stability to the younger generation, and you want to demand personal responsibility for maintaining a good diet, an active lifestyle, and practicing safe sex 100% of the time?

              I'm not demanding nor am I suggestion everyone lives and dies by my beliefs. I am suggesting it would be beneficial to the people partaking in said activities.

              People have known that for decades now, just like they've known that smoking cigarettes is deadly. As a result over 400,000 Americans die every year from tobacco use (our #1 preventable killer), and heart disease holds the #2 position. Needless to say, the vast majority doesn't give a shit.

              Automation is going to destroy many of those jobs that young people rely on for employment, and remove their ability to climb the proverbial ladder and seek out educated positions.

              Automation has been destroying jobs since the industrial revolution its just that the machines have become better. Very much like how some jobs become obsolete there will be need for other things. Something tells me that robotics engineers will become the new "mechanic" and so on.

              Previously, when automation destroyed jobs, the answer was to go get an education. When good-enough AI is coupled with automation that is ever-advancing, the end result is a destruction of more human jobs than are crea

    • Have we factored in lifestyle into this as well? Something tells me that men that do not smoke, don't indulge in alcohol often or at all and keep fit will have better results...(seems obvious right?)

      That's an interesting thought. The only example I can think of is Donald Trump, who never smoked, never drank alcohol, and doesn't appear to exercise, yet managed to father a child at age 59.

    • More data needed. Time to crowdfund a study on the subject?

      Why do a study on it? Are we lacking in population?

      This study is to sell a story. Nobody cares if older men can produce healthy children. Responding to this "study" is a waste of any man's time as all responding will do is reinforce the narrative being sold.

  • have we stepped into a time machine or something? I thought it was common scientific knowledge that men also had biological clocks in that with age sperm numbers diminish and they slow down which directly affects the chances of a successful fertilization. this has been known for decades
    • women need constant reassurance that their poor decisions are men's fault, of course the more they nag the more men will get sterilized

    • have we stepped into a time machine or something? I thought it was common scientific knowledge that men also had biological clocks in that with age sperm numbers diminish and they slow down which directly affects the chances of a successful fertilization. this has been known for decades

      It isn't common scientific knowledge because it isn't true. The fertility rate for men does flatten as they age, but at ages 40-50 it's only slightly lower than at ages 20-30. Successful fertilisation is actually common with 50+ year old males, while next to impossible with 50+ year old females.

      With few exceptions (outliers) females have a sell-by date that starts at 30 and completes roughly ten years later when they are completely infertile. Men have a sell-by date that starts when they're 50 and frequentl

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )
        My impression from my (brief) read through was that the two variables "Female fertility as a factor of age" and "Male fertility as a factor of age" are confounding variables with respect to each other. In other words, you can't just measure the female fertility by age without considering the male fertility by age, and vice versa. The male fertility is less sensitive to age than female fertility, but the effect is still present (no necessary similarity as to cause, just effect), and they interact in a not

  • Grover Cleveland, the only POTUS to serve 2 non-consecutive terms, was 49, and already President, when he married 21 year old Frances Folsom and was 54 when their 1st child was born and 66 for their fifth.
    Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was also already in office and 51 when he married 22 year old Margaret Sinclair and 52 when their 1st son, current prime minister Justin Trudeau was born on Xmas Day of the same year, was 56 for the birth of their 3rd and 72 years old when he fathered his only daughte

    • His 2nd wife Julia Gardiner was 24 & he 54 when they married and he was 55 & 70 respectively for the birth of their 1st and 7th kids.
      Tyler remains the champion stud among presidents as he had previously fathered EIGHT children with Letitia Christian

    • Grover Cleveland, the only POTUS to serve 2 non-consecutive terms, was 49, and already President, when he married 21 year old Frances Folsom and was 54 when their 1st child was born and 66 for their fifth.

      I'm in my late 30s and feel like I'm too old to have any more kids. There's no way I want to be having kids now and not getting them out of the house until I'm probably in my 60's.

  • It is true. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @07:33AM (#54741185)
    Yes I agree men are most certainly affected by biological clocks. There is the constant nagging, the weight gain, demands for a baby, the impending crash into "the wall" in terms of her looks, and god help them the hair style that she just "loves" that makes her look just like her mom. Not to mention the hoards of friendly and attractive younger women that seem to come out of the wood work once a guy gets to that point in his life.

    Something must be done.

    • and god help them the hair style that she just "loves" that makes her look just like her mom.

      Or yours. *shudder*

  • I didn't want any kids even at 18 years, the biological alarm already had gotten off, so I got myself snipped.

  • ...among IVF patients. Great. So we're talking about men who likely already have some kind of problem.

    Rewrite: for men-with-problems, those problems are more significant with age. Again, big surprise.

    I'd bet that older men, who want children, and can't seem to have children, experience more stress than younger men. Possibly due to the very simple fact that they've spent more time trying and more time failing.

  • The problem with this study is it was biased from the start. By starting with couples seeking IVF to begin with, your sample is people having difficulty conceiving, rather than a cross section of the general population.

    The conclusion to this study should be: Of people with problems conceiving, IVF is less effective at helping couples where the man is over 40... There are plenty of examples of rich old shriveled bastards getting their 22 year old trophy wives pregnant with normal, healthy babies. And that

  • Yeah, that's not what a "biological clock" is, (Score:3)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @04:32PM (#54743735)
    but I get what the story means.

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