A study found that the more sperm there are and the better they move, the longer men live. It's said that the king of sperm is the king of longevity.
A research team led by Professor Lærke Priskorn at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark announced on the 5th (local time) in the international journal "Human Reproduction" that "an analysis of nearly 80,000 male semen samples collected over 50 years found that men with higher sperm motility lived 2.7 years longer than those with lower motility." Motility refers to the ability of sperm to reach a woman's egg.
The research team analyzed sperm data from 78,284 men who underwent infertility testing at a public semen analysis laboratory in Copenhagen from 1965 to 2015. When compared to Danish national medical records, men who produced more than 120 million motile sperm in a single ejaculation had a maximum lifespan of 80.3 years. Men who produced fewer than 5 million sperm had a maximum lifespan of 77.6 years, indicating a 2 to 3-year difference.
Professor Priskorn noted that "a correlation between reproductive capacity and lifespan has been discovered," adding that "a decline in semen quality could serve as an indicator of underlying factors affecting reproductive ability and overall health." Experts described the research as suggesting potential for using semen analysis to examine health status.
Allan Pacey, a professor at the University of Manchester in the UK, analyzed that "this study suggests that men with low sperm quality may experience health problems sooner or have a higher risk of early death," and "while the exact reasons have not been clearly established, it is possible that health issues affect sperm quality."
John Aitken, an honorary professor at the University of Newcastle in Australia, also said that "an increase in reactive oxygen species inside the body can reduce sperm motility and consequently increase mortality rates," and that "oxidative stress processes could accelerate declines in sperm quality and damage bodily tissues, hastening aging."
The research team plans to conduct follow-up studies to identify diseases more frequently occurring in men with low sperm quality and to find ways to prevent them.
References
Human Reproduction(2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deaf023