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WEDNESDAY, March 19 (HealthDay News) -- The benefits of folate for women in preventing birth defects are well known, but new research suggests the nutrient also boosts sperm health.
Men with relatively low levels of folate had increased risks for sperm containing either too few or too many chromosomes, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. These types of deficiencies can cause birth defects and miscarriages, the experts noted.
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Folate is one of the B vitamins and is found in leafy green vegetables, fruit and beans, chickpeas and lentils. By law, breads and grains sold in the United States are also now specially fortified with added folate to help ward off birth defects.
"We looked at sperm to find different kinds of genetic abnormalities," said lead researcher Brenda Eskenazi, a professor of maternal and child health and epidemiology and director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Berkeley's School of Public Health. "The abnormalities we looked at here were having too few or too many chromosomes," she said.
Normally, human sperm have 23 pairs of chromosomes. "In sperm you normally have one of each, but sometimes there are two and sometimes there are none of a particular chromosome," Eskenazi said.
If a normal egg was fertilized with one of these abnormal sperm, it could result in a birth defect, such as Down's syndrome, Eskenazi said. "This can also result in an increase in miscarriage," she said.
The researchers looked at three specific chromosomes: X, Y and 21. "We saw an association between [male] folate intake and how many abnormal sperm there were, in terms of the chromosome number for these three different chromosomes," Eskenazi said.
The study findings are published in the March 20 issue of the journal Human Reproduction.
In the study, Eskenazi's group analyzed sperm from 89 healthy men. In addition, the researchers asked the men about their daily consumption of zinc, folate, vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene.
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