The consumption of alcohol during pregnancy with a boy is the reason for the reduced quality of the sperm in the young man who has already reached the age of majority, say Danish scientists from Aarhus University. The team’s claim is supported by data from a study led by Cecilia Ramlau-Hansen at the annual conference of the European Society for Reproductive Medicine and Embryology, currently underway in Rome. The study included the data from the follow-up of the pregnancies of 12 thousand women up to 36 weeks of gestation during the period 1984-1987 in Denmark. In 2005-2006, the data from the spermograms of 347 of the adult sons of the participants were entered. Their age at the time of the study was between 18-21 years. The scientists looked at the data in four groups: pregnant women who consumed 12 g of pure alcohol (for example, 330 ml of beer or 40 ml of vodka) per week; up to 18 years, between 24 and 48 years and over 54 years. It turned out that in the boys whose mothers consumed the most alcohol, the average amount of spermatozoa in a milliliter of semen was about 25 million. In the control group, the number was 40 million spermatozoa. In the study, other factors that influence the quality of the sperm were taken into account. According to the criteria of the World Health Organization, 20 million sperm per milliliter is the lower limit of the norm. According to Dr. Ramlau-Hansen, the negative result is due to the influence of concentrated alcohol on the male gonads during intrauterine development of the fetus. The research team also noted that the highest concentration of male sex gametes in the sperm was found in the sons of women who consumed 12-18 g of pure alcohol per week. According to Dr. Ramlau-Hansen, this is probably due to the positive effects of small amounts of alcohol on the body or to inaccurate data on the amounts of alcohol consumed by pregnant women.