Effect of male body mass index on clinical outcomes following assisted reproductive technology: a meta-analysis

Summary Overweight and obese males might exhibit a great risk of infertility. However, according to the current studies, the association between elevated male body mass index (BMI) and the clinical adverse results after assisted reproductive technology (ART) remains controversial. Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the effects of raised male BMI on clinical outcomes following ART. PubMed, EMBASE and three Chinese databases were used to identify relevant studies. The primary outcome was clinical pregnancy rate. Secondary outcomes included live birth rate and sperm parameters. A total of 5262 male participants from 10 cohort studies were subjected to meta-analysis. Results indicated that overweight or obese had no significant impact on clinical pregnancy rate [in vitro fertilisation (IVF): odds ratio (OR), 0.73; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.39–1.39; intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI): OR, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.92–1.15], live birth rate (IVF: OR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.78–1.06; ICSI: OR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.50–1.99) and sperm concentration (SMD, −0.28; 95% CI, −0.65 to 0.08) compared with normal weight following IVF/ICSI treatments. Exclusion of any single study and almost all the sensitivity analyses showed that our results were reliable. At present, the role of male BMI in the process of ART is only partly understood and should be further investigated.