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

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

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.

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.

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