EVALUATION OF DIETARY INTAKE'S IMPACT ON THE LEVELS OF PFAS IN RELATION TO HUMAN SPERM QUALITY.

Introduction: Infertility currently affects around 12-15% of the world's population and it is known that male factors are responsible for 40-50% of these cases. It is well established that infertility is a disease that can occur due to the interaction of several factors, such as genetic predisposition and other parameters related to the exposome such as diet, physical activity, and environmental exposures among others. Specifically, regarding the environmental factors, the exposure to a perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a family of chemical compounds in our daily life, recognized as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDs) could be seriously implicated. Objective: To cross-sectionally assess the associations between dietary intake of PFAS and sperm quality in an adult male population. Methods: Ledfertyl population comprising healthy male participants aged 18-40 years (n=200) was used. Dietary intake (DI) of PFAS was assessed using consumption frequency questionnaires and food concentration data. The impact of PFAS on sperm quality was examined through multiple linear regression (MLR) models. Total PFAS DI (in ng/week) was categorized into energy-adjusted tertiles, being tertile (T3) the one with the highest dietary intake of PFAS and T1 as the reference tertile. PFAS DI was also treated as a continuous variable adjusted for energy expressed as 1 standard deviation (SD) increment. Models were evaluated and adjusted for various confounding variables. Results: Higher PFAS exposure (expressed in tertiles and as a continuous variable) was significantly associated with an increased percentage of abnormal head (ß coefficient T3 vs T1 [95% CI]) 5.81% [1.25 to 10.4], and with 2.53% [0.55 to 4.50]) respectively. No other significant associations were found for the remaining sperm parameters. Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study assessing associations between PFAS DI and sperm quality parameters. These findings support epidemiological data linking exposure to these chemicals to a deterioration in sperm parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]