The uses of herbal products are not regulated in Nigeria and in many low-income countries and are freely available to everyone. The safety of these herbal medicines is poorly understood. Commonly used herbal remedies can interfere with reproductive health. This is a prospective study that investigated the possible effects of Nigerian herbal remedies on semen quality involving 218 patients who attended the fertility unit of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Southeastern, Nigeria. Questionnaire was administered by an interviewer and a seminal fluid analysis with respect to motility, concentration, and volume were carried using WHO standard. The result showed that 83.97% of the patients with history of herbal intake had abnornal seminal fluid analsis while only 16.03% of subjects with no history of herbal intake had abnormal result.This gives a clue of the possibility of male infertility from Nigerian herbal remedies.The reproductive health damage from consumption of Nigerian herbal remedies should be identified with indepth risk assessment. Introduction The use of homeopathic and herbal medicines has increased in recent years. This has probably arisen as a result of a number of factors including disillusionment with conventional drugs, growing confidence in complementary medicine, and a belief that the products are safe, often on the grounds that ‘natural’ equates to safe [1-4].. A review of literature has shown a range of favourable and unfavourable effects for a range of natural substances[5]. Patients often turn to complementary medicines, including homeopathic and herbal remedies, for chronic and inflammatory conditions, and those refractory to the beneficial effects of conventional products[6-10]. In Nigeria socio-economic deprivation, poverty and ignorance have led to trust and reliance on traditional herbal preparations for health reasons.The use of herbal products are not regulated in Nigeria and in many low income countries and are freely available to everyone. Cases of organ (kidney, liver, heart, testis, etc) failure after prolonged intake of herbal preparations have been anecdotally reported in Nigeria and other African countries. An increasing number of cases remain undocumented due to poor record keeping in the developing world[11]. Nigeria has about twelve million infertile persons[12]. Although there is a general documented belief that the most common cause of infertility in Nigeria is infection[13], cases abound where infection have been treated without correction of infertility[12]. In Nigeria there are higher rates of irreversible oligospermia or azoospermia than most other causes of infertility and less resources for the management of infertility[14]. Of adult couples in African countries, it is estimated that 10–25% are subfertile and of these subfertile couples female factors account for about 55% and male factors for about 30–40% of causes, while 5–15% of causes are unexplained[12]. According to investigation on classification of infertility by Ikechebelu and coworkers based in Southeastern Nigeria, there is higher prevalence of male infertility in southeastern Nigeria. About 65.0% of them had primary infertility while 35% had secondary infertility[15].In view of these alarming statistics, our laboratory set out to investigate if there is a relationship between the intake of Nigerian herbal remedies (NHR) and semen quality and by extrapolation male reproductive health amongst men who reported to the infertility clinic of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Anambra State, Nigeria. Methodology Study subjects recruitmentTwo hundred and eighteen male volunteers of infertile couples attending the infertility clinics of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Urology Clinic of Surgical Outpatient, Department of Surgery, Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Nigeria, who conformed to the selection criteria (Table. 1) were recruited into this prospective stu
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