Sudden low sperm count after illness

[TTC1209]

Hi - wondering if anyone can help put my mind at rest!

my Partner is 27 and had a semen analysis test done last July as we had been TTC for about a year. It came back with good results. 52 million/ml and 57% motility. He suffered a really bad flu in January where he had a super high fever for about a week I would say and had to do another analysis on Feb as we had just been referred to an IVF clinic. His results from that were 0.3 million/ml and 2% motility! I know illness can have an effect on sperm but this seems crazy to me. He is repeating the test at the end of May but I’m worried this illness has caused lasting damage because of the huge drop, has anyone got any similar experiences?

thanks

Sperm takes several months to generate/mature, so it's likely the illness had an impact but I'd like to hope it was just on the sperm being created at that time. I have zero scientific knowledge on this but it would make sense to me that the sperm formed when he was ill are perhaps not so good, and that the following batches would be better. Is he taking fertility vitamins and eating a healthy diet to help?

Hi - thanks for your reply! It just seems like a very severe drop which has threw me! He’s fairly healthy, we eat healthy as our main fertility issues are me so everything I’m eating he’s eating and he does a lot of regular exercise. He isn’t taking any supplements as we’ve just got the results back from the February test but I did look into Maca root. It’s just disheartening that maybe all of our efforts to conceive naturally the last few months have been futile tbh

I’m in a similar position what happened in the end @TTC1209

He had another test done 3 months after this one and it was back up to normal and all his tests have been fine since. It took us a long time after this but Iam currently 12 weeks pregnant with a natural pregnancy :) so guessing his swimmers are now ok!

Sounds like it must of been the illness then that caused the drop. My husband was pretty ill 5 weeks prior to his sample had the flu for 1-2 weeks. Sample came back awfully low like 1% motility 2mil sperm count 99% defects, very viscous and lots of epithelial cells which shows inflammation. But we had a baby easily enough 4 years ago, he’s 44 now and I’m 31, and we’ve been ttc 7 months knew it might take a little longer but we’re shocked at his results (first ever SA) and praying it’s post flu and temporary x

Also to add - we are healthy he never smoke or drinks bmi 28 so fairly healthy maybe a little bit of weight to loose. No conditions or any changes

Ah it definitely sounds like it’s just related to the flu to me! Did he have a fever? I remember my husband had a fever for a good week and that’s apparently what damages the sperm the most. He’s had quite a few samples before and after this and all were completely normal. It might just mean the next three months are less likely for conception but hopefully just a delay due to the illness!

Yeah he had a fever for 3 days at least, I can’t really remember as we were both so ill together. He lost a stone in 2 weeks as well as wasn’t able to eat anything. Never took our temps but we were in bed shivering badly for at least 48hrs and then still pretty ill for about 5 more days.

Thanks for your promising story, we are going to try do everything we can to improve it in these next 6 weeks for the next sample, hopefully by end of March levels will be much better at 90 days post illness 🤞🏼even if it just gives us a bit selection to choose from for ivf