Men's dietary patterns in relation to infertility treatment outcomes among couples undergoing in vitro fertilization

Abstract

Purpose(s): To evaluate the relationship of men's dietary patterns with outcomes of in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Methods: This is a prospective cohort study including 231 couples with 407 IVF cycles, presented at an academic fertility center from April 2007 to April 2018. We assessed diet with a validated food frequency questionnaire and identified Dietary Pattern 1 and Dietary Pattern 2 using principal component analysis. We evaluated adjusted probability of IVF outcomes across the quartiles of the adherence to two dietary patterns by generalized linear mixed models.

Results: Men had a median age of 36.8 years and BMI of 26.9 kg/m². Women's median age and BMI were 35.0 years and 23.1 kg/m², respectively. Adherence to Dietary Pattern 1 (r_Pearson=0.44) and Dietary Pattern 2 (r_Pearson=0.54) was positively correlated within couples. Adherence to Dietary Pattern 1 was positively associated with sperm concentration. A 1-unit increase in this pattern was associated with a 13.33 (0.71-25.96) million/mL higher sperm concentration. However, neither Dietary Pattern 1 nor Dietary Pattern 2 was associated with fertilization, implantation, clinical pregnancy, or live birth probabilities.

Conclusions: Data-derived dietary patterns were associated with semen quality but unrelated to the probability of successful IVF outcomes.

Keywords: Dietary pattern; In vitro fertilization; Male subfertility; Probability of live birth.