Q. My wife and I have been trying to get pregnant for several months now, but thus far we’ve had no luck. A buddy of mine at work said he’d read that one of Viagra’s hidden benefits is its ability to improve the quality of sperm. Could that be the answer to our fertility problems?
A. The active ingredients in Viagra (sildenafil citrate) and other oral ED drugs — tadalafil in Cialis, vardenafil in Levitra and Staxyn, and avanafil in Stendra — appear to improve sperm quality, according to a meta-analysis of data from 11 studies covering roughly 1,300 men.
The analysis, conducted by a team of Chinese urology researchers, found that the ED drugs improved sperm motility as well as the shape of the sperm, which tends to be abnormal in men with fertility problems.
Their findings, published in the July 2017 issue of “Urology,” found, however, that the ED medications had no discernible impact on semen volume and sperm concentration.
The better a man’s sperm move and the more normal their shape, the more likely it is that he will be able to impregnate his partner. Researchers theorize that by sidelining the phosphodiesterase-5 enzyme, the ED drugs enhance the effects of a substance known as cyclic guanosine monophosphate, or cGMP. As it turns out, cGMP plays a key role not only in erectile function but infertility as well.