Mountain Biking Threatens Fertility, Study Says

CHICAGO, IL (BRAIN)--Mountain bikers may be quick on the bike, but their sperm has a good chance of being pokey, according to a recently released Austrian study.

Dr. Ferdinand Frauscher, head of the department of uroradiology at University Hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, lead a study comparing the sperm and scrotums of mountain bikers and non-cyclists. Not only were the mountain bikers' sperm counts lower by 50 percent, but their sperms' spontaneous movements were slower, the study said.

The study could be skewed because the majority of the 40 bikers studied had gone to the hospital for lumps in their scrotums. The study did not indicate where the non-cyclists in the study came from.

Some 90 percent of the cyclists had abnormalities in their scrotums compared with about a quarter of the non-cyclists, but again, the bikers had come to the doctor's because of the problem and were not randomly chosen from the cycling population.

Also, all cyclists included in the study spent more than 2 hours a day riding and rode off-road more than 3,000 miles a year.

Frauscher presented his study at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. He demonstrated his point by showing a film of speedy sperms compared with a single cyclist's sperm putting across the screen.

"The exact causes for the decreased sperm motility are unclear," Frauscher told the UPI Science News. "We believe that repeated mechanical trauma to the testicles results in some degree of vascular damage, and may thereby cause a reduction in sperm motility."

Frauscher suggested padded saddles, padded pants and suspension to "reduce the impact on the scrotum."