There has been a decrease in the average sperm count of men worldwide over the last few decades. The figures that came out were quite shocking. As the infographic shows, it has been revealed that there was a 51 percent fall in the figures between the years 1973 and 2018. The sperm count went down from 101 million sperm per milliliter of sperm to just 49 million. Lead author of the study, Hagai Levine, commented on the decline by saying,
"I think this is another signal that something is wrong with the globe and that we need to do something about it".
She further added,
"I think it’s a crisis that we better tackle now, before it may reach a tipping point which may not be reversible”.
The methods used for fertility research have been criticized in the past for not taking into account the potentially biased sampling methods used in earlier studies, citing also the variable of changing laboratory methods. The researchers claim that in these cases such issues are taken into account. Only considering samples where the same count method was used, were of an acceptable size and did not include men who were known to have fertility problems.
Infographic by: statista
