His biological clock is ticking, too

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Hundreds of chick flix, chick lit and sitcom plots center on a woman in her 30s realizing that she’s running low on eggs, she won’t be getting any new ones, and time is running out.

Long ago, science relieved women of the blame they once carried in many cultures for not conceiving a boy child. Researchers figured out that it’s the man’s sperm that determines a baby’s gender. Now, researchers at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology have lifted some of the burden of blame when a woman in her 30s or 40s can’t get pregnant. If her mate is 35 or older, there’s a reduced chance she’ll get pregnant, and increased odds that she’ll suffer a miscarriage.

In a study of 21,239 artificial inseminations, French scientists report that men over age 35 are less likely to impregnate a woman. It was, researchers said, the first clinical proof that being an older man has a direct effect on a couple’s fertility. Miscarriage rates also increased when the man was over age 35.

Science has long known that a woman’s odds of getting pregnant dip, and then plummet, throughout her 30s. ‘But we also found that the age of the father was important in pregnancy rates -- men over 35 had a negative effect,’ said Dr. Stephanie Belloc of the Eylau Centre for Assisted Reproduction in Paris in a news release. ‘And, perhaps more surprisingly, miscarriage rates increased where the father was over 35.’

The scientists suggest that when either the man or the woman is over age 35, infertility treatment options, including in vitro fertilization (so-called test tube fertilization), might be more successful than intrauterine insemination (so-called turkey baster insemination.)

-- Susan Brink