Cigarette smoking and its toxicological overview on human male fertility—a prospective review

Abstract

One in seven couples worldwide is affected with the reproductive disorder called infertility and 40%–50% of cases are identified as male factor contributed infertility. Our aim of this review is to elucidate the smoking impact on semen parameters, reactive oxidative species (ROS) state, cigarette toxicity marker, and in detail how it is affecting semenogelin/chromatin structure by cadmium as one of the cigarette toxicants. Smoking stimulates the ROS activity which induces sperm DNA fragmentation or damage among smokers. Also it releases cadmium that is identified as reproductive metal toxicant in humans in detail. Cadmium has possible atomic to change sperm chromatin via zinc and semenogelin.

Keywords:

• Cigarette smoke
• metal toxicity
• ROS
• zinc
• male infertility

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Vellore Institute of Technology as well as Milann Fertility Centre, BACC Bangalore, India.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.