The Microbiome, an Important Factor That Is Easily Overlooked in Male Infertility

Abstract

Humankind has been interested in reproduction for millennia. Infertility, in which male factors contribute to approximately 50%, is estimated to concern over 72 million people worldwide. Despite advances in the diagnosis, medical treatment, and psychosocial management of male infertility over the past few decades, approximately 30% of male infertility is still thought to be idiopathic. Despite emerging advances in the microbiome associated with male infertility have indicated that the microbiome may be a key factor to the management of male infertility, roles, and mechanisms of the microbiome remain ambiguous. Here, we mainly discussed the association between microbial infection in the genital tract and male infertility, effect of antimicrobial therapy on male reproduction, association between microbial dysbiosis and male infertility, and effect of probiotic intervention on male reproduction. This review made progress toward establishing a relationship between the microbiome and male infertility, and explored the role of the microbiome in male infertility. We call for more high-quality studies to focus on the relationship between microbes and male infertility, and strongly suggest increasing awareness among sterile males with microbial infection and/or microbial dysbiosis when they seek fertility help.

The Embodied Microbiome

“…Sexual selection and reproductive success [69][70][71][72] Sexual performance issues, infertility, conception problems and problems carrying to term have all been linked with dysbiotic reproductive microbiomes.…”

Probiotics supplementation in the treatment of male infertility: A Systematic Review

“…Studies show that infertile men may have elevated levels of ROS and less effective semen antioxidant capacity (Lewis et al, 1997;Subramanian et al, 2018). Wang et al (2022) point out that, despite efforts to identify the causes and develop new approaches to improve male fertility in recent decades, there are still few effective treatments to delay the decline of idiopathic male infertility. Thus, recent studies have evaluated different antioxidant supplementation strategies and their effects on ROS to improve male infertility (Bozhedomov et al, 2017;Kızılay & Altay, 2019;Kopets et al, 2020) and it has been shown that natural antioxidants or vitamin supplements, like vitamins C and E, glutathione, folate, zinc, selenium, carnitine, coenzyme Q10, lycopene, and N-acetyl cysteine, can neutralize free radicals thus improving semen parameters (Bui et al, 2018;Busetto et al, 2018;Gamidov et al, 2019).…”

“… Wang et al . (2022) point out that, despite efforts to identify the causes and develop new approaches to improve male fertility in recent decades, there are still few effective treatments to delay the decline of idiopathic male infertility.…”

“…Thus, due to the potential of probiotics to promote the balance of the microbiome, as well as their antioxidant capacity, which has a strong association with male fertility ( Wang et al ., 2022 ), the objective of this systematic review is to evaluate available studies that have investigated the effects of probiotic supplementation on male infertility.…”

Ejaculatory Abstinence Affects the Sperm Quality in Normozoospermic Men—How Does the Seminal Bacteriome Respond?

“…Despite a convincing body of evidence suggesting the potential of short ejaculatory abstinence in improving the sperm quality, its impact on the changes in the bacterial profiles of semen have been by and large overlooked. In the past, samples collected from the reproductive tract of clinically healthy males were considered free from bacteria, which has resulted in the male reproductive microbiome not being well described [ 19 ]. Yet, recent studies have found that bacteriocenoses are a normal part of the male urogenital system and body fluids, including semen and urine [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”