We hear so much these days about the increased risk of miscarriage in older women but now it seems that men who leave it until their mid 30s to start a family are also more likely to lose their unborn child to miscarriage. With statistics showing that more men are leaving it later and later to have children this new research is a stark warning that some of them may be leaving it too late.

A French study of thousands of couples has shown that miscarriage rates increase once a man hits 35 and by the age of 45 this risk has doubled with one in three pregnancies ending in miscarriage regardless of the age of the woman. The large scale study is the first to reveal the true impact of a man’s age on his chances of fatherhood and warns that it is not just women who need to keep an eye on their biological clocks if they want to start a family.

 

Although it is possible for a man to father a child at the age of 90, the truth is that the older a man is the more semen abnormalities there are and to give himself the best possible chance of becoming a father a man should try to have children before the age of 40 to 45. Others studies have shown a father’s age can have a lasting consequence on his child’s health. Older fathers are, for example, five times more likely to have children with Down’s syndrome and up to twice as likely to have a child with a cleft lip. Children with older dads also have an increased risk of heart defects, autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 3:40 am and is filed under Detox, Fertility, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.