Your man’s poor health could cost you pregnancy

Agnes Katini has had quite an agonising struggle when it comes to pregnancy. After suffering one ectopic pregnancy and two miscarriages, she opted to seek medical attention, accompanied by her husband.

As much as she had to make adjustments to her diet and lifestyle, the doctor advised her husband to do the same. Maintaining a healthy weight for the couple was one of the areas the doctor advised to improve the outcomes.

Preconception care

The loss of a pregnancy has always been perceived as having been influenced by the general health of the mother.

There are factors such as the Rhesus status that can cause pregnancy loss when treatment is not administered. Mothers are also encouraged to eat healthy and maintained a healthy weight.

They are also cautioned against alcohol intake, smoking and stress to ensure that a pregnancy has the highest chance of reaching full term.

This shows that preconception care, antennal clinics, immunisations, prenatal vitamins pregnancy maintenance is normally directed to the mother.

The Statistics in Kenya

Pregnancy loss may happen as a result of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or stillbirth.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a miscarriage is the loss of an unborn baby before 28 weeks of gestation.

A baby who dies after 28 weeks of pregnancy, before or during birth is considered stillborn.

An ectopic pregnancy occurs outside the uterus, in most cases, the fallopian tube. The fertilized egg implants outside the uterus where it cannot survive. No other organ is best suited to hold and maintain a pregnancy to full term than the uterus.

Ectopic pregnancies are life threatening to both the mother and the baby due to excessive bleeding. Despite concise efforts to reduce pregnancy loss, the rate of still births in Kenya remains high.

It is unfortunate that Kenya gets over 90 still births every single day. This is according to the Ending Preventable Stillbirths report.

Research findings

There is growing evidence suggesting that pregnancy loss is more prevalent for couples where the father to be had underlying metabolic comorbidities. 

A study published in the Human Reproduction journal in 2020 links the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and ectopic pregnancy to the father’s chronic metabolic health conditions.

The study findings imply that a woman whose baby is sired by a father with three or more metabolic conditions such as obesity, diabetes hypertension and high cholesterol has a 27 percent chance of losing a pregnancy as compared with 10 percent in miscarriages of babies from men who had no medical condition.

The study observed close to a million cases in the United Sates between 2009 and 2016.

Pregnancy loss increased with the increasing number of paternal health conditions such that the risk was 21 percent when the father had only one chronic metabolic condition, 23 percent there were two conditions and 27 percent where there were three or more.

The “Why “behind it

The health and lifestyle of a potential father can cause detrimental effects in sperm quality.

Researchers from the US study hypothesise that the overall health and lifestyle of a man could adversely affect the genetic express of his sperm.

This means that as much as the DNA is not altered, its expression in the offspring could result in poor pregnancy outcomes.

Additionally, placenta functionality can be tampered with. Professor Michael Eisenberg, the lead researcher for the US study says, “if the placenta isn’t working properly, then this could lead to the pregnancy loses that we have observed.”

Additionally, a high body mass index during puberty in males contributes to low sperm count in adulthood. 

An excerpt from the Human Reproduction Journal reads, “excessive conversion of androgens into estrogens in redundant adipose tissue results to hypogonadism—where reproductive organs produce little or no sex hormones.”

However, it is encouraging the doctors from Footsteps to Fertility Centre Nairobi highlight that changes in sperm quality due to lifestyle causes is mostly reversible after treatment.

“Fertility is a Team Sport”

It is now a scientific fact that paternal health before conception influences the trajectory of the pregnancy. In the previous years, fathers were not expected to consider much in prenatal health care.

Most couples did not allow themselves to regard fathers as potential roots for unfortunate birth outcomes. It is now undeniable that both men and women should prioritise optimal health before conception as a viable way to improve pregnancy outcomes. Any woman who is considering motherhood should be aware of the health status of the father-to-be.