how to prevent any problems – breaking latest news

One in six people in the world suffers from
infertilit. According to a recent report published by the WHO, the World Health Organization, this is 17.5% of the adult population with minimal differences between high- and low-income countries, confirming that the path to parenthood can be difficult if not impossible, for millions of people around the world regardless of where they live and what resources they have, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, who also spoke of the urgent the need to increase access to affordable, high-quality care for all who need it. We speak of infertility when a pregnancy is not achieved after 12 months of unprotected sexual intercourse and it can depend equally on both the man and the woman.

Fertilit in Italia

In Italy

dove the fertility rate is among the lowest in the world (1.24 children per woman) and the lowest in Europe (in fruitful France between 1.8-1.9), fertility problems are part of the broad and current discussion on the causes of the falling birth rate. Italy is a potentially fertile country, but we have more than a third fewer children than we would actually like – he explains Alexander Rosina professor of Demography at the Catholic University of Milan -. If we compare young Italians with their French or Swedish peers, there is no difference in life plans, but ours find themselves postponing their first child more (which arrives after 31.5 years, the highest value in Europe). especially for economic and work issues. Waiting to find more suitable living conditions makes time pass and becomes an implicit renunciation.

Female fertility

In a country where there are fewer and fewer children like ours, there is a large number of couples who would like a child, at any cost. tragic when forty-year-olds come to us looking for their first child and discover – unaware – the limits of nature.
It’s one thing to know how things are and to consciously decide not to have children or to postpone the choice, it’s another thing to have no idea of ​​how fertility works and this, if discovered late, can ruin your life – explains Nicola Colacurci, president of the Italian Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics (SIGO) —. From our observatory we see that in the imagination of too many women there is the idea that children can be born even at the age of 45/50, while there are limits linked to biological age which are often not even exceeded with MAP (Medically Assisted). And this applies to women in general but, even more so, to those who suffer from endometriosis or are familiar with early menopause. For them the determining factor is time, and they must know it, in order to be able to choose consciously. It is necessary to generate culture for motherhood and, above all, for responsible sexuality which means choosing the best method of contraception for oneself, when one is not seeking pregnancy and, if possible, trying to plan a child when there is a greater reproductive capacity than it begins to decrease already at the age of 35 and, from 37, it decreases significantly, explains Colacurci.

Male fertility

As far as men are concerned, the scenario does not change, here too there is a need to talk to young people about how to preserve fertility in order to become fathers one day. Some scientific works demonstrate the possibility of a decline in seminal quality after the age of 40-45, a sort of “aging” of the spermatozoa. This, while not necessarily associated with a significant reduction in seminal characteristics, can lead to reproductive difficulties especially if associated with metabolic alterations and other andrological pathologies not diagnosed early. Charlie Chaplin, who had a child at the age of 70, a rare case, cannot be considered normal – he says Andrea Lenzi endocrinologist and president of the National Committee for Biosafety, Biotechnology and Life Sciences of the Prime Minister’s Office -. What we observe a epochal decline in the quality and quantity of sperm. The hypofertiles have increased, men who have a smaller quantity of sperm, are less mobile and with worse morphology, but it should be noted that we are concerned with the male population who would have been less fertile in any case.
in fact, it is necessary to distinguish three groups: males who are not very fertile from birth, those who have excellent seminal quality, and whose duration of fertility is longer than the average, and then there is the intermediate group where the men, even young ones, who have small testicular pathologies that would be easily resolved if they were addressed in the pediatric age.

In males it is necessary create greater awareness of prevention who goes from a visit to the andrologist, or to an endocrinologist who deals with andrology, before coming of age. All children between the ages of 15 and 18 should be taken for a visit to the specialist so that, if the pediatrician has not intercepted some problems related to development in childhood or puberty, if addressed in adolescence it can still be Resolved. Waiting could, on the other hand, have a negative impact on fertility but also on sexuality, with repercussions on a psychological level. Let’s take the case of a child who has testicular retention or phimosis (narrowing of the foreskin), the consequences could be disabling, while intervening at the right time could probably be decisive.
Of male problems, by culture, there is little talk and, what is worse, there are no check-ups, concludes Lenzi.

Fertility and lifestyles

On the one hand there is the need to make known the limits of fertility and have indications on how to preserve it, on the other, as reaffirmed by the WHO, to consider infertility as a global emergency. It should be explained to the younger ones what reproductive well-being also means prevention of sexually transmitted diseases
i and the need to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
A balanced diet, regular sporting activity (without excesses), limiting alcohol, giving up smoking, having a less stressful life, are all factors that can interfere with a pregnancy, Colacurci points out. In this complex scenario there are also exogenous factors, among all pollution, which have effects on reproductive capacity. Both oocytes and sperm are cells like any other, and what they absorb during their production journey makes them particularly delicate. This is why even pollution is an enemy of fertility – explains Lenzi -.
And smoking too: just think that in smokers the seminal fluid is full of nicotine.

Fertilit e PMA

To help couples who find it difficult to have a child, it is also necessary to improve the diagnosis and treatment procedures for couple infertility, but also to increase centers and services and make them available throughout the country. The approval of the LEA (Essential Levels of Assistance) in the ambit of PMA (according to a recent ministerial note) is already a first signal for giving homogeneously, on the national territory, treatments to combat infertility, offering the same reproductive chances in the whole country. One of the major limitations of the assisted reproduction that there is an extreme localization of the interventions with differences in indications, accesses, costs at regional level with a further discrepancy between public and private centres, concludes Colacurci.

It is on social freezing (preventive freezing of oocytes and sperm) as a way to save time: There are sperm banks, like oocyte banks, but there are few public ones with all the certifications, and they are dedicated almost exclusively to cancer patients. Today this cannot be the solution to the falling birth rate, we will see in the future, concludes Lenzi.