Recently, the Ministry of Solidarity and Health received the results of a study on infertility, a subject long neglected by the medical community, but also by society in general. This work gives details with regard to the causes which include in particular the age of conception of a child or even endocrine disruptors.
Infertility is a problem almost everywhere in the world, but especially in industrialized countries , including France. This term refers to couples unable to have a child after one or two years of regular and unprotected sexual intercourse. Moreover, infertility can affect women as well as men and despite the existence of certain medical techniques and works that are sources of hope, the risks are far from negligible, especially as they increase.
On February 21, 2022, the Ministry of Solidarity and Health published the results of a study dealing with infertility in France . This work was commissioned from Pr Samir Hamamah, head of the reproductive biology department at Montpellier University Hospital and Salomé Berlioux, president of the Chemins d'Avenir association.
Infertility affects no less than 3.3 million people in our country. However, for several decades, the use of medically assisted procreation has increased steadily. It should be noted that the number of children resulting from in vitro fertilization (IVF) increases by 0.5% every seven or eight years. Today, no less than2.5% of French children come from IVF, or one in forty.
The increase in recourse to medically assisted procreation is not the result of chance. The authors of the report confirm a decrease in natural capacities women and men to give life. The causes are multiple, including exposure to reprotoxic products of the endocrine disrupting type that are found almost everywhere on a daily basis. Other factors explaining this phenomenon are also put forward:high consumption of tobacco, cannabis or even obesity and other eating disorders.
Researchers have identified another factor:the decline in the average age for the conception of a child. According to the study, 25% of children born before the year 2000 had a 35-year-old mother and a 38-year-old father on average. In 1975, women became mothers at the age of 24 on average. However, female fertility tends to decline after the age of 30 , with an acceleration from age 35. In addition, it can be both a question of physiological ovarian failure and a decline in the quality of oocytes.
For men, the risk increases after forty years with a burst from fifty. However, male infertility is more related to a drop in the concentration of sperm in the semen. The researchers estimated the drop in this concentration at 50% between 1973 and 2011 .
