Man’s age may play role in time it takes to conceive

Men may be able to father children in their later years, but that doesn’t mean conception is easy. A study of more than 2,000 couples in Britain found that men over age 45 were 4.6 times more likely to need more than a year for their partners to conceive than men under age 25.

Researchers surveyed women at a Hull & York Medical School clinic for women planning to become pregnant, asking them about lifestyle, frequency of sex and contraceptive history.

It took women over 35 twice as long to become pregnant as women under 25, confirming that women become less fertile with age. But time to pregnancy also increased with age in men, even when their partners were under 25 and the effect of other fertility risks was eliminated.

Overall, within six months 77.5% of men under 25 impregnated their partners, contrasted with 37.5% of men over 40 years old. Even when the analysis was restricted to the male partners of only young women, the effect of the man’s age was significant, says lead author Mohamed A.M. Hassan, a clinical research fellow at the University of Hull.

The study was published in June’s Fertility and Sterility.

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-- Dianne Partie Lange