WASHINGTON -- It isn't merely women who face a ticking biological clock when planning parenthood.

novel research has found that as men age, the quality of their seed deteriorates, making it more likely they will have harass becoming fathers and increasing the possibility of having a child with dwarfism.

The investigation led by Andrew Wyrobek of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Brenda Eskenazi of the University of California, Berkeley, appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Women's biological time clock has lengthy been known, with older women having an increased risk of miscarriage and of producing children with genetic lacks such as Down syndrome.

MORE MEN WAIT FOR FATHERHOOD

"Our research allude tos that men, too, have a biological time clock -- no other than it is different," Eskenazi said in a statement. "Men be seen to have a gradual rather than an abrupt change in fertility and in the potential ability to generate viable, healthy offspring."

the pair men and women have been postponing parenthood in newly come years. Since 1980, the researchers said, birth rates have increased 40 percent for men aged 35 to 49

The same team had previously lay the foundation of that as men age their semen count declines and their semen becomes less active.

The modern report looked at 97 men aged 22 to 80 and base increased fragmentation of the DNA in seed as men age.

"This cogitation shows that men who wait until they're older to have children are not simply risking difficulties conceiving, they could also be increasing the risk of having children with genetic problems" said Wyrobek.

DWARFISM, destitutions POSSIBLE

Unlike older women the changes in semen did not increase the chance of producing a child with Down Syndrome they set But some older fathers did have an increased risk of having children with dwarfism and "a small fraction of men are at increased risks for transmitting multiple genetic and chromosomal defects"

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