New Delhi: Researchers from the UK have found that obesity drugs may have a potential unforeseen benefit—improving fertility in men. The findings were presented on 15 June at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
However, researchers highlighted that their evidence is based on five studies and still needs to be confirmed by trials. But evidence from other researchers also points to the same conclusion.
Obesity is one of the major causes of male infertility. The excess fat disrupts hormonal balance, lowers testosterone levels, and increases the conversion of testosterone into estrogen. With the rise of obesity worldwide, researchers have also begun to look at its impact on reproductive health.
Over the past five years, most of the obesity drugs that have come into the market are designed around GLP-1 receptors, which give people a feeling of fullness. To check whether these drugs had an impact on male fertility, Pratibha Natesh, an endocrinologist at Warwick Medical School in Coventry, and her team looked for trials of GLP-1 drugs where researchers had measured testosterone levels too.
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‘Eye opener to all endocrinologists’
While they found only five such studies, in most of them, GLP-1 receptors, a class of obesity drugs that includes medicines like semaglutide, improved testosterone levels and sperm health in men. The drug is likely to reduce inflammation, improve metabolism, and help restore a hormonal balance.
This does not come as a surprise since the relationship between obesity and low testosterone is quite easy to establish. Fat cells contain high levels of an enzyme which converts testosterone into oestradiol, the main female sex hormone.
Researchers found that their systematic review was supported by other studies, including one presented by a physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, which analysed the health records of more than 1,600 men who had been prescribed obesity drugs. They found that testosterone levels rose by nearly 30 per cent after the consumption of GLP-1-related drugs.
At the meeting, Natesh highlighted that the team’s findings were an “eye opener to all endocrinologists” who were treating men facing symptoms of depression, low libido, or muscle loss.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)