P-6: The Impact of Cigarette Smoking on Semen Quality in Infertile Couples

Background: Approximately, one third of world&#039;s population older than 15 years of age smokes. Cigarette smoke contains toxic chemical, mutagenic and carcinogenic compounds. Some of these substances were found in seminal plasma.Over the past two decades, there has been an increasing body of evidence that cigarette smoking may impair human semen quality.The results of these studies are conflicting, particularly with regard to the sperm concentration and morphology. Materials and Methods: This prospective cross-sectional study was conducted from 2009 to 2013 in ART unit of the Tehran General Women Hospital, Iran. The volunteers were 1275 idiopathic infertile men, attending the andrology laboratory in context of infertil ity investigation. The current smoker was defined as ≥ 1 cigarettes / day in the last six months.The volunteers were undergoing semen analysis. Each subject was answered to a questionnaire about his smoking habits, lifestyle. Appropriate semen and smoking data were available for 1263 men, including 315 (24.9%) smokers and 948 (75.05%) nonsmokers. Standard semen analysis was performed according to WHO criteria. Chi-square and Student t tests were used for statistical analysis. Results: Statistical analysis demonstrated significantly lower semen quality in smokers compared with nonsmokers. Cigarette smoking was associated with a significant decrease in the mean sperm concentration (− 10.4%) (p<0.0001), total number of motile sperm (−12.7%) (p<0.0001). The percentage of normal forms was significantly reduced in smokers (−6.17%) (p<0.0001). The semen volume was not different between two groups. Conclusion: Although the exact impact of smoking on male fertility remains controversial, in present study, we observed the negative effects of current cigarette smoking on sperm parameters quality in idiopathic infertile men. Therefore, it would be sensible to advise men to complete smoking cessation before any parental project