Biological clock does affect men, study reveals

A recent study has shown that despite men having babies into later life (think Charlie Chaplin) they can be affected by the biological clock

Though this may sound hard to believe, given the amount of well known older fathers, such as Mick Jagger, Des O’Connor and Rod Stewart, scientists have found men must consider their age when hoping to have a child.

The research was carried out at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston,  and Laura Dodge, who led the research said that couples should bear the findings in mind when planning a family.

“When making this decision, they should also be considering the man’s age,” she said

Researchers studied 19,000 treatment cycles in the Boston area between 2000 and 2014. The results showed that men over the age of 42, coupled with a younger partner below 30, had a significant impact on the live birth rate.

They discovered women aged under 30 with a male partner aged 30 to 35 had a 73 per cent  chance of a live birth after IVF. But that impressive success rate fell to 46 per cent when the man was aged 40 to 42.

Laura Dodge, told The Guardian newspaper: “Declining sperm quality certainly plays some role, but our work shows that this is not the whole picture, we found similar results among couples with no documented male infertility, so something else is happening.”

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