Couples where the man vapes appear to have a better chance of making a baby than couples where the man smokes traditional combustible cigarettes.South Korean researchers at CHA University in Goyang went through records from 296 couples who underwent in vitro fertilization or intracytoplasmic sperm injection between May 2022 and January 2024. Every woman was a non-smoker and partners with other fertility problems, such as poor ovarian response or endometriosis, were left out to focus on the role of nicotine.Among the 151 men who smoked cigarettes and the 145 who vaped, their sperm quality differed in important ways. Motility (how well sperm swim) was higher in the vaping group, while concentration of sperm cells favoured smokers. Even so, pregnancies in the vapers part of the study were more likely to last..Clinical miscarriage struck 36% of pregnancies that began in the smoking group, compared with 12% among vapers. When researchers followed those pregnancies to the delivery room, 56% of the vaping couples welcomed a live baby, versus 41% of cigarette couples.Lead study author Dr. Lee Joon-ho said the findings hint that chemicals produced by burning tobacco may harm sperm more than the aerosols in vaping devices. “Given that e-cigarettes are often perceived as an alternative to conventional smoking, further research is necessary to explore their effects on gamete quality and function to compare these impacts with those observed in nonsmokers,” wrote the researchers..Health Canada warns there is no safe level of nicotine, yet vaping continues to climb even as cigarette use falls. World Health Organization says the share of adults who smoke cigarettes has dropped from 33% in 2000 to a projected 20% this year, a global trend which lines up with Canadian data.The authors, writing in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, stress their work does not mean vaping is harmless. They call for larger studies that track couples over several years to see whether today’s short term advantages translate into safer, healthier families tomorrow.
