Study provides more evidence COVID shots harmed male fertility

The prominent British center-right newspaper the Telegraph made an excellent start last week when it ran a front-page story titled, “Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths.” Just one day later, however, its reporting on a new study describing a drop in a key parameter affecting male fertility was treated almost as meaningless and linked to nothing more than “a combination of lockdown and working from home.”

Worrying findings

The study, conducted in Denmark, examined the quality of semen in potential donors in Denmark between 2017 and 2022. Almost 7,000 young men between the ages of 18 and 45 were enrolled in the study; around half of them were aged between 18 and 24. 

Just over two-thirds of the men in the trial were not accepted as donors; their sperm parameters were measured only once. 1839 men were accepted as donors, and their semen was tested up to eight times throughout the study period. This enabled the researchers to track individual donors over the years to ensure that trends were not simply the result of outliers but expressed a general decline across the board.

What the study found is that while semen volume, sperm concentration, and total sperm count did not change significantly over the years monitored, both motile sperm concentration and total motile sperm count (TMSC) decreased significantly, among both those who were accepted and rejected as donors.

The decline in motile sperm (sperm capable of independent movement) greatly concerned the researchers, who stressed that this,

… has potential implications for human fertility, because sperm motility is correlated with the probability of conception.

It all started to go wrong in 2020 (or did it?)

The study revealed that motile sperm concentration dropped by 16 percent, and TMSC by 22 percent, among the entire donor pool, and by 17 percent and 21 percent among those accepted as donors. However, the drop was only seen between 2019 and 2022, the final three years of the study.

Furthermore, the declines were also seen within the categories of sperm (which are graded from a to d with regard to their motility). The researchers commented that this suggested “a general decline in motility and not simply a decline in the concentration of one type of sperm.” 

In fact, the concentration of grade-a sperm declined even more sharply than the average across the study, by 30 percent between 2019 and 2022 in all donor candidates.

Looking at those donors who made at least eight donations between 2019 and 2022, 425 donors saw their parameters improve during those years, whereas 587 saw their parameters worsen.

If it wasn't COVID, then it must have been lockdowns, right?

Throughout the study, the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 are cited as those during which changes for the worse were seen. What could have happened during those years to cause a key fertility marker in men to decline so sharply?

The researchers suggest that,

Such a sharp decline in sperm motility to occur over a relatively short length of time suggests that external factors were likely to have played a role. In this context, we note that the observed decline in sperm motility roughly corresponds to the onset of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

However, they then note that COVID itself is not a likely culprit, since no samples were taken from men with COVID symptoms or a diagnosis. So, they tentatively conclude that lockdowns could be behind their observations:

We should be mindful that many other aspects of life also altered around this time. For example, widespread lockdowns may have led to changes in working patterns, diet, and levels of physical activity. Several studies have shown that each of these factors can impact sperm motility…

However, men (and women) have been becoming more sedentary, with worsening diets, for many years. The study's authors actually stress that,

… despite popular media often reporting that semen quality in humans has declined in recent decades, the question is still very much unresolved.

They cite various studies showing that in general, over the past decades, the situation has not changed significantly, despite concerns about “climate change,” microplastics, and other factors.

Did anything else happen in the world, for instance in 2021?

Let's take another look at those years 2020, 2021, and 2022 to see if there's anything that can be teased out of the data that could solve this mystery.

While the study lumps 2017-2019 together, and then 2020-2022 together, the data were actually gathered and sorted according to year, though this doesn't become apparent until one looks at the study's graphs and tables. 

Here's Figure 4, which illustrates changes in motility parameters over the six years:

What the study doesn't mention is that 2019 was something of an anomaly. Compared with 2018, the figures for 2020 don't represent a significant drop. However, from 2021 onward, the motility counts do drop significantly; in fact, the drop from 2021 to 2022 among accepted donors (that is, the healthier members of the study), is quite dramatic.

Here's Figure 5, which distinguishes between grade-a and grade-b sperm:

The results here are less clear-cut, but it's noteworthy that there is little sign of any recovery as time passes; in fact, things are getting steadily worse. 

And here's Figure 6, which tracks individual donors who made eight or more donations throughout the period. A and B represent one person each; C and D show each individual donor as a trajectory.

From D it seems quite clear that men were doing worse from 2021 onward.

New news confirms old news…

The authors of this study cite many other interesting studies in this area from past years; one they fail to cite is the Gat study that was published toward the end of 2021, and which was covered by Frontline News at the time.

The Gat study is of particular interest as it also found alarming changes in motility — which were closely correlated to the COVID shots. Unlike other studies which attempted to debunk a correlation, the Gat study was a (relatively) long-term study which followed trial participants for over 150 days (other studies stopped after just two months or less). 

Gat and colleagues concluded, using average figures, that “most” people's key sperm parameters were more-or-less back to normal by half a year after the shots. However, their data revealed that a significant subset of men were actually doing very badly even six months after their last dose, and that things were still getting worse when the trial stopped.

… and new scientists are just as timid as old scientists

Now we have another study out of Denmark showing similar results, as can be seen in images C and D from Figure 6 — some men are doing better, a few are doing much better, but many more are doing worse, and a subset of them are seeing their sperm quality decline dramatically.

Over 80 percent of Danes were injected with the COVID shots, with an average of 2.24 doses per person, meaning that of those who were injected, a large number also had at least one booster shot.

But the authors of this latest study only suggest that changes in lifestyle should now be investigated for a decline in fertility parameters in light of their findings.