Common painkiller drugs lead to male infertility

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: painkiller drugs, infertility, health news

(NaturalNews) Phthalates, bisphenol-A (BPA), and other environmental toxins are now widely known to disrupt proper hormone function in humans, but a new study has revealed that common painkillers like aspirin and ibuprofen are far worse. According to scientists from Denmark, Finland, and France, pregnant women who take painkiller drugs have a significantly higher risk of bearing baby boys with reproductive problems than pregnant women who do not.

Published in the journal Human Reproduction, the study draws urgent attention to the serious dangers associated with painkiller drugs. Pregnant women who take any painkiller drugs during their second trimester double their risk of having a baby boy with cryptorchidism, a condition in which the boy's testicles do not properly descend due to inadequate testosterone production. And taking more than one painkiller drug during the second trimester raises that risk by a whopping 1,600 percent.

"A single paracetamol tablet [500mg] contains more endocrine disruptor potency than the combined exposure to the 10 most prevalent of the currently known environmental endocrine disruptors during the whole pregnancy," explained Dr. Henrik Leffers, senior scientist at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen and author of the study.

"In fact, a single tablet will, for most women, be at least a doubling of the exposure to the known endocrine disruptors during the pregnancy and that dose comes on a single day, not spread out over nine months as with the environmental endocrine disruptors. Thus, for women using mild analgesics during the pregnancy, the mild analgesics will be by far the largest exposure to endocrine disruptors."

Taking painkiller drugs is largely considered to have no significant risks associated with it, so millions of people pop them every time they have an ache or pain. And use of such painkillers is quite common among pregnant women as well, with more than 57 percent of Danish mothers admitting in a telephone survey they used them.

The modern world seems to be a minefield of assault against the male reproductive system. Even laptop computers are a threat, heating up male genitalia to temperatures so high that reproductive function becomes impaired (https://www.naturalnews.com/030326_laptop_com...). So it is important to be cautious and aware of the things you eat and exposure yourself to.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/0...