GPs treating women who have had recurrent miscarriages may need to point the spotlight at the wannabe fathers, with UK research finding a link between multiple miscarriages and poor sperm quality.

Compared with healthy controls, the sperm of 50 men whose partners had had three or more miscarriages before 20 weeks had reduced total and progressive motility, the Imperial College London-led research found.

Further, sperm DNA fragmentation was twice as high among these men, the researchers reported in Clinical Chemistry.

And morning serum testosterone was 15% lower than that for controls, while semen reactive oxygen species was four times higher.