It has long been known that smoking can have a deleterious effect on sexual potency and fertility capacity of males but the subject of the possible adverse effects of cigarette smoking on steroidogenesis and spermatogenesis is controversial.
The comparative study presented here was conducted on 30 cigarette-smokers and 30 non-cigarette-smokers of men. They were divided into 3 different groups such as control group (composed of 10 smokers and 10 non-smokers), impotence group (10 smokers and 10 non-smokers) and infertility group (10 smokers and 10 non-smokers). They were subjected to the investigation of medical history, body weight, height, testicular size, coital frequency per week, nocturnal penile tumescence frequency per week, routine laboratory works, plasma FSH, LH, testosterone and prolactin by radioimmunossay and semen analyses.
The smokers were found to have a slightly smmaller frequency of coitus per week and also that of nocturnal penile tumescence per week than non-smokers but the differences were not significant. Plasma FSH, LH, testosterone and prolactin levels were also hot significantly different between smokers and non-smokers of each group. The levels of LH and testosterone of control group were greater than thoses of impotence and infertility groups. Semen samples from control and impotence groups showed no significant differences on volume, count, motility and morphology between smokers and non-smokers. Only in the infertility group, sperm motility was significantly greater in non-smokers than smokers and also morphology was slightly greater in non-smokers than smokers but the difference was not significant.
The results of this study identify that the postulated deteriolated effect of cigarette smoking on steroidogenesis and spermatogenesis would have most significantly impinged. However, its clarification will require more careful and extensive investigations with large groups of subjects.
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