Slanted Science

New research is showing scientists how sperm production can be increased or decreased by altering the levels of hormone signaling in the testes.

This science is quite clearly a load of balls.

Ouch. We’re sorry about that.

Anyway, the work was conducted at The Queen’s Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was headed by Lee Smith. What the boffins have discovered is the mechanism by which androgens (hormones, such as testosterone, which produce typical masculine characteristics) exert their manly effects.

They created a set of mice in which the receptor for these androgens was missing from a specific cell type (peritubular myoid cells) within the animals’ testicles. They found that loss of this receptor did not cause any major developmental defects in the mice, but did completely take away their ability to produce sperm (or at least, put production below detectable levels). Sperm deficits weren’t due to decreases in any hormones, so they must have arisen purely through the receptor loss.

The researchers predict that this effect will be maintained across species, and that raies the possibility of modulating human sperm production: if we could temporarily block the androgen receptor proteins (which were missing from these mice), this could provide a method of birth control by stopping sperm production. Conversely, one could speculate that stimulating the receptors by artificial means would increase sperm production in men with low sperm counts.

Don’t Hold Your Breath, But This May Lead To: with a lot more research, we may be able to produce drugs to increase or decrease sperm production levels. The question would still be, though: will women trust a man who claims to be on  the pill?

In the meantime, here is a wonderful little gift for the man in your life: a plush sperm toy!