Current Trends of Male Reproductive Health Disorders and the Changing Semen Quality

Reproductive health is the basic human right which refers a state of complete physical, social and mental well‐being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. However during the past few decades, a number of reports have appeared, which have raised serious concerns about the development of reproductive problems in animals and man. Simultaneously, there have been controversial reports of alterations in human semen quality along with reports of an emerging incidence of congenital malformations of the male reproductive tract, such as cryptorchidism and hypospadias and of an increasing trend of testicular cancer. Even though a lot of the changes observed in male reproductive health are controversial, there seems little discrepancy that testicular cancer is increasing in the rate of recurrence, with an unexplained increase in the age‐standardized incidence observed in Europe and the USA. In the west of Scotland, the number of testicular germ cell tumors registered has more than doubled over 1990 than it was in 1960, whereas a study from Norway reported that the age‐related frequency of testicular cancer increased from 2.7/1 lakh individuals in 1955 to 8.5/1 lakh individuals in 1992. In the USA, Department of Physiology, Vidyasagar College for Women, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India Correspondence to: Dr. Pallav Sengupta, Department of Physiology, Vidyasagar College for Women, 39, Sankar Ghosh Lane, University of Calcutta, Kolkata ‐ 700 006, West Bengal, India. E‐mail: [email protected] Date of Submission: Jul 24, 2013