Table. 1.
Table. 1.
Summary of literature on the association between diet and male fertility
| Nutritional factors | Findings | References |
|---|---|---|
| Dietary patterns | Healthy eating patterns positively affect semen quality and improve fecundity, while unhealthy diets had the opposite relationship. | Cutillas-Tolín et al. (2015); Eslamian et al. (2017); Karayiannis et al. (2017); Danielewicz et al. (2018) |
| Proteins | High intake of dairy products might affect semen quality and fertility. Limited evidence is available from human studies on the effect of soy on fertility; however, most of them showed no harmful effect. | Jacobsen et al. (2014); Mínguez-Alarcón et al. (2015); Vanegas et al. (2015); Gaskins et al. (2018); Nassan et al. (2018); Wise et al. (2018) |
| Dietary fats | TFAs are related to reduced fertility, whereas ω-3FAs are protective against SDF, TT, and testicular volume. | Mínguez-Alarcón et al. (2017); Salas-Huetos et al. (2018) |
| Carbohydrates | Diets with low-glycemic load that contain high amounts of whole grains might have positive impact on fertility. | Liu et al. (2015) |
| Antioxidants | Antioxidant supplementation improves semen quality and may increase the probability of clinical pregnancy and live birth. | Ahmadi et al. (2016); Majzoub and Agarwal (2018); Alahmar (2019); Li et al. (2019); Henkel et al. (2019) |
| Vit B12 supplement | Vit B12 may be protective against fertility by increasing sperm count, motility and minimizing sperm DNA damage. | Banihani (2017) |
| Vit D supplement | Vit D may positively affect semen quality and sperm motility but not sperm concentration. | Zhu et al. (2016); Abbasihormozi et al. (2017); de Angelis et al. (2017); Bosdou et al. (2019) |
| Zn supplements | Zn may elevate sperm quality in infertile males. | Colagar et al. (2009); Zheng et al. (2012); Shi et al. (2014); Zhao et al. (2016); Lee (2018) |
| Fa and Zn supplement | Fa and Zn may impose a greater influence only on sperm concentration, morphology, and serum folate level. | da Silva et al. (2013); Irani et al. (2017); Schisterman et al. (2020) |
| Iron | Iron may be inversely related to sperm concentration and motility. | Adoamnei et al. (2019) |
| CoQ10 supplement | No significant correlation between CoQ10 and TT levels. | Banihani (2018) |
| DHA supplement | DHA may increase ω-3FAs and DHA concentration in seminal plasma, TAC, and decrease SDF. | Martínez-Soto et al. (2016) |
| Beverages | Occasional/moderate intake of alcohol and caffeine does not affect semen quality, while high intake of these beverages or SSBs negatively affects semen quality. | Liu et al. (2015); Wesselink et al. (2016); Karmon et al. (2017); Ricci et al. (2017); Ricci et al. (2018); Ghosh et al. (2019) |
TFA, trans fatty acid; ω-3FA, omega-3 fatty acid; SDF, sperm DNA fragmentation; TT, testosterone; DHA, docosahexaenoic acid; Vit B12, vitamin B12; Vit D, vitamin D; CoQ10, coenzyme Q10; TAC, total antioxidant capacity; Zn, zinc; Fa, folic acid; SSB, sugar-sweetened beverage.
Prev Nutr Food Sci 2021;26:109~120 https://doi.org/10.3746/pnf.2021.26.2.109
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