Men who carry cellphones in their trouser pockets may be at risk of damaging their sperm count, according to research by Hungarian scientists.
Full details of the study will be formally presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Berlin on Tuesday. Early reports of the Hungarian work attracted scepticism from other scientists who pointed to the contradictory results of other work on the subject.
Imre Fejes and colleagues from the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Szeged in Hungary studied the cellphone use and sperm counts of 221 men over a 13-month period. They asked the men how long they had owned a cellphone and for how many hours they carried it about their person in standby mode, as well as how long they spent in calls every day. They drew comparisons between those who used their phones a lot and non-users.
Heavy users of cellphones had sperm counts that were up to 30% lower than those who did not have or use a cellphone at all, the scientists say. They found that not only did using the phone affect a man’s sperm count and the motility (speed of movement) of the sperm, but simply having it switched on in a pocket was enough to do damage. Cellpohones periodically but briefly transmit information to radio masts to establish contact.
”The prolonged use of cell phones may have negative effect on spermatogenesis and male fertility, that presumably deteriorates both concentration and motility,” say the Hungarian team in the abstract produced for the conference. ”Further controlled randomised studies are necessary to precise the correlation coefficients.”
But the study is small and its findings do not sit well with the bulk of evidence so far on the health hazards of cellphones.
No conclusive impact on sperm count or motility has been found by other scientists to date.
Hans Evers, a past chairperson of ESHRE from the Academic hospital in Maastricht in the Netherlands, said any conclusions as to the meaning of the study should wait until scientists have been able to digest the full presentation of the results. ”This research is interesting but raises more questions than it answers,” he said.
”It is an observational as opposed to interventional study, which appears not to take into account the many potential confounding factors which could have skewed the results. For example, what if heavy mobile phone users in Hungary have particularly stressful lives and jobs? What if they come from a different age group or social class than the non-users? These factors would have a considerable effect on the outcome of the research, but it is not possible to tell from the abstract whether this has been taken into consideration.” – Guardian Unlimited Â