After a new study researchers found that sperm count is falling in France. They tracked 26,000 Frenchmen from 1989 to 2005 and the results are that sperm decrease roughly 32 percent. Sperm and egg fusing. Image credit: wikipedia
According to the study the number of sperm in one milliliter of 35-year-old Frenchman fell from about 74 million to about 50 million, a drop of one third.
Grace Centola, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology in Birmingham, Alabama, said:
“That’s certainly within the normal range, but if you think about it, if there continues to be a decrease, we would expect that we’ll get into that infertile range.”
Electron micrograph of human spermatozoa magnified 3140 times. Image credit: wikipedia
The term sperm is derived from the Greek word (σπέρμα) sperma (meaning “seed”) and refers to the male reproductive cells. In the types of sexual reproduction known as anisogamy and oogamy, there is a marked difference in the size of the gametes with the smaller one being termed the “male” or sperm cell. A uniflagellar sperm cell that is motile is referred to as a spermatozoon, whereas a non-motile sperm cell is referred to as a spermatium.
Diagram of a human sperm cell. Image credit: wikipedia
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