New Study Says Men's Fertility Declines with Age
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We hear a lot about women and their biological clocks, but now there is a new study that says men's fertility also declines with age. Our Elizabeth Cohen is here with the details in our Daily Dose. Good morning to you. So the guys got to worry about this stuff, too.</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. We just thought it was us, and it's not true, and one of the reasons why men have thought they didn't need to worry all these years is that you always hear the stories about the men who had children when they were 99 years old, one foot in the grave. Well, let me give you some examples, because that does indeed happen. Well, maybe not quite that old. For example, Strom Thurmond fathered his first of four children at age 69. Tony Randall fathered two babies at the age of 70. And Anthony Quinn fathered his last child in his early 80s. So it does indeed happen. But what this study says is that sperm motility, in other words, the speed of sperm, goes way down with age. Sperm simply gets slower as they get older. Not only that, but as they get older, sperm tend to just swim around in circles more often, lost, don't know what they are doing. And for all of these reasons, that's why fertility goes down as men age. Let's look at the numbers. When you look at 22-year-old men 25 percent of them have slow sperm, but when you look at 60-year-old men, 85 percent of them have slow sperm. And what this all adds up to is that men who are 35 and older are half as fertile as men who are 25 and younger. In other words, a man older than 35 has half the chances of being able to father a child as someone who is under age 25. This particularly concerns doctors because more and more men are waiting until later in life to have children, just like more and more women are.</s>KAGAN: You're telling me. Different story. But do they know why? Because just like everything we have kind of goes downhill with age?</s>COHEN: To some extent, that's true, absolutely. There are certain cellular changes in sperm. They just get older and -- get slower as they get older. But also, there appear to be some external reasons. For example, the longer you live, the more chance the environment has to wreak havoc on your body, in addition, the higher the chance that you are going to have some kind of a disease that could affect the sperm. So just the longer you live, the higher the chance something is going to go wrong.</s>KAGAN: There you go, so, ladies, go out and find yourself a young guy. That's the message from that.</s>COHEN: That's right, 22.</s>KAGAN: Elizabeth, thank you so much. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com