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In recent years, several environmental and lifestyle factors have been linked to decreased sperm quality, and of all, diet is one of the most plausible of those that have been identified.
A team of Spanish researchers has shown, for the first time, that the habitual intake of walnuts in a Western-style diet causes changes in sperm DNA function and their ability to fertilize.
The study, conducted by researchers from the CIBER of Obesity and Nutrition (Ciberobn), the Human Nutrition Unit of Rovira i Virgili University and the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Utah, was published in the Journal of andrology.
According to the researchers, the results of this research provide the first scientific evidence that adding walnuts to the Western diet affects sperm DNA methylation, i.e. its epigenetics, a mechanism that would explain why the diet can modulate male fertility, Cyberobn explains in a note.
In recent years, several environmental and lifestyle factors have been linked to decreased sperm quality, and of all, diet is one of the most plausible of those that have been identified.
In addition, several studies have shown the close association between alteration of sperm DNA methylation or epigenetic modification of DNA and sperm quality.
However, no randomized clinical trials have been published to date examining the effects of diet on these changes in sperm DNA function.
The new study evaluates for the first time the effect of regular short- to medium-term consumption of a nut blend – almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts – on sperm DNA methylation patterns in healthy individuals following a Western-style diet.
The analysis was conducted as part of the Fertinuts study, a clinical trial led by Dr Mònica Bulló and Dr Albert Salas-Huetos whose main results were published in 2018 and which have already shown that walnut consumption for 14 weeks, significantly improved sperm count, sperm vitality, as well as sperm motility and morphology.
With this new study involving 72 healthy, non-smoking, young participants in the Fertinuts study (48 of whom were in the nut-eating group and the remaining 24 were in the control group), the researchers were able to observe that 36 regions Genomic genes were differentially methylated between the start and end of the trial only in individuals who consumed nuts, and 97.2% of the regions showed increased methylation.
For the first author of the article, Albert Salas-Huetos (currently working at Harvard University, USA), “this work shows that there are some sensitive regions of the sperm epigenome that could respond to diet, which could result in changes in sperm and their ability to fertilize “.
The researchers also note that the potential health benefits of the findings warrant further studies to verify the findings seen in other populations.
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