Slimming boosts male fertility

Two approaches to boosting obese men's sperm have been presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, reports BBC.

The first suggested that obese men who lost weight were more likely get their partners pregnant.

The second found that a cancer drug helped some infertile men have children.

Experts said the approaches were interesting alternatives to IVF and were opening up "real possibilities" for men.

Weight loss is already widely advised for women struggling to conceive and obesity has long been suspected as a factor in male infertility.

Prof Allan Pacey, from the the University of Sheffield in Canada, said: "These are quite interesting studies because we have almost no treatments to improve the sperm quality of sub-fertile men. He said that poor lifestyle had long been suspected as a factor in male fertility and the findings "opens up a real possibility" for them to have children.