Antidepressants may harm male fertility
ANTIDEPRESSANTS taken by millions of men could be impairing their fertility by causing damage to the DNA in their sperm.
In 2006, Peter Schlegel and Cigdem Tanrikut of the Cornell Medical Center in New York City reported that two men had developed low counts of healthy sperm after taking two different selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant.
Now Schlegel's team has given 35 healthy men doses of a third SSRI called paroxetine, sold as Seroxat or Paxil, over five weeks, and examined their sperm before treatment and four weeks in.
Superficially, the men's sperm seemed healthy - amounts of sperm and semen, and the shape and motility of sperm, were all normal. But when the team looked at DNA fragmentation in the sperm, using the TUNEL method, a worrying picture emerged. On average, the proportion of sperm cells with fragmented DNA rose from 13.8 per cent before taking paroxetine to 30.3 per cent after just four weeks.
Læs artiklen fortsat her: Antidepressants may harm male fertility New Scientist 24. september 2008
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