Male reproductive traits are differentially affected by dietary macronutrient balance but unrelated to adiposity

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 3.05 MB, PDF document

  • A. J. Crean
  • S. Afrin
  • H. Niranjan
  • T. J. Pulpitel
  • G. Ahmad
  • A. M. Senior
  • T. Freire
  • F. Mackay
  • M. A. Nobrega
  • Barrès, Romain
  • S. J. Simpson
  • T. Pini

Dietary factors influence male reproductive function in both experimental and epidemiological studies. However, there are currently no specific dietary guidelines for male preconception health. Here, we use the Nutritional Geometry framework to examine the effects of dietary macronutrient balance on reproductive traits in C57BL/6 J male mice. Dietary effects are observed in a range of morphological, testicular and spermatozoa traits, although the relative influence of protein, fat, carbohydrate, and their interactions differ depending on the trait being examined. Interestingly, dietary fat has a positive influence on sperm motility and antioxidant capacity, differing to typical high fat diet studies where calorie content is not controlled for. Moreover, body adiposity is not significantly correlated with any of the reproductive traits measured in this study. These results demonstrate the importance of macronutrient balance and calorie intake on reproductive function and support the need to develop specific, targeted, preconception dietary guidelines for males.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2566
JournalNature Communications
Volume14
Issue number1
Number of pages12
ISSN2041-1723
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk


No data available

ID: 347485438