Androgen use tied to brief decline in fertility

Use of androgens results in a temporary decline in fertility, according to a study. Most androgen users, however, achieve parenthood without any help from the healthcare system.

“Previous research has found that male users of androgens are diagnosed approximately twice as often with infertility,” the authors noted.

To examine fertility in men using androgens, this study included 545 males who tested positive for androgens in an antidoping test programme in Danish fitness centres during the period from 3 January 2006 to 1 March 2018. Confirmed users of androgens were then matched by birth year with 5,450 male controls. The authors followed this cohort from 10 years prior to testing positive until the end of follow-up in May 2018.

Fertility rate was lower by 26 percent in the group of androgen users compared with those in the control group (rate ratio [RR], 0.74, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.60–0.90; p=0.0028) during the 10-year period prior to testing positive. However, androgen users caught up in the years following the doping sanction; at completed follow-up, the fertility rate was only lower by 7 percent than expected (RR, 0.93, 95 percent CI, 0.84–1.03).

In addition, the prevalence of assisted reproduction was 5.69 percent and 5.28 percent in the androgen user and the control groups, respectively.

“Overall, the fertility rate and the prevalence of assisted reproduction among androgen users were close to those in the background population,” the authors said.