Men, Skip the Viagara if You're Trying to Get Your Partner Pregnant

It’s Saturday night, and you decide to take a dose of Viagra to make the experience last. But if you’re out for more than a good time—trying to get your partner pregnant, that is—you might want to reconsider that dose.

At Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, Dr. David Glenn and a team of researchers found that a single, 100 milligram dose of Viagra can prematurely activate the acrosome on the head of the sperm. You don’t know what an acrosome is? (We might have to make you take another quiz.) It’s a little sack of enzymes that makes the outer membrane of the egg dissolve a little so that the sperm can penetrate the egg. If the acrosome pops off too soon, it won’t do its duty at the right time. Sort of like premature ejaculation, which we don’t have to go into, right? So if you’re just having fun, no problem. But if you’re hoping to become a daddy, you might want to ditch the drug for a while.

Winter 2007

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