Background: The incidence of infertility is 10-15% globally and this has risen in recent years. Alcohol has been consumed in India for centuries, both in rural and urban areas, with prevalence rates ranging from 20% to 38% in males, according to various reports. Studies in northern India found the 1 year prevalence of alcohol use to be between 25% and 40%. In southern India, the prevalence of current alcohol use varies between 33% and 50%, with a higher prevalence among the lesser educated and the poor. Aim: To determine the effect of alcohol on seminal parameters. Design: Retrospective study. Setting: Morpheus Lucknow Fertility Center, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Time duration: From January 2017 to December 2020. Sample size: Total 130 patients consisting of 57 patients as nonalcoholic control and 73 patients as alcoholic. Main outcome measure(s): The outcome of interest was seminal parameters, including count, motility, volume and morphology. Method: The study included two subject groups, controls and alcoholics. Subjects in the control group were volunteers who were free from any disease and who had never consumed alcoholic drinks and who had never smoked. Subjects in the alcoholic group were nonsmokers who had consumed a minimum of 180 mL of alcohol (brandy and whisky, both 40-50% alcohol content) per day for a minimum of 5 days per week in the past year. Semen samples were collected after at least 48 hours but no more than 7 days of sexual abstinence. Semen parameters - volume, count, motility and morphology - were analyzed. Results: In the alcoholic group, volume (p < 0.005), count (p < 0.005), percentage of rapid progressively motile sperm (p < 0.005), were statistically significantly decreased, while percentage of nonprogressive sperm and percentage of immotile sperm (p < 0.005) were statistically significantly increased, compared with the control group. The percentages of slow progressively motile sperm and morphology were not statistically significant. Conclusions: The present study found statistically significant results that chronic alcoholism suppresses semen quality, at the seminiferous tubular level. Alcohol decreases semen volume, total sperm concentration, motility of sperm and viability of sperm. This study has proved beyond doubt that chronic alcohol consumption has a detrimental effect on the quality of semen, which in turn, may have effect on their reproductive outcomes
