Swim club: Expensive male fertility supplements are all the rage

SwimClub, a new male fertility-supplement company, markets to both men and women. “You can’t out-ovulate bad sperm,” reads one ad. “Don’t leave conception to chance,” reads another.

Osman Khan, SwimClub’s co-founder, said he’d discovered he had a low sperm count amid a failed round of IVF. … With the help of his wife, he assembled his own supplement stack. His sperm-metrics improved, and he and his wife successfully had a baby via IVF.

The experience led him and two business partners to work with urologist Dr. Michael Eisenberg, director of the Male Reproductive Medicine and Surgery program at Stanford University, to build a supplement pack they could sell. … For roughly $300, men receive a 90-day supply of daily pills.

Venture capitalists poured $121 million in funding into startups focused on male fertility last year, according to data from PitchBook. …

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 “I’m getting more patients asking about supplements …,” said Dr. Bobby Najari, director of NYU Langone’s male-infertility program. But he doesn’t routinely recommend male prenatals, he said, citing limited studies for men, unlike for women, as well as challenges deciphering between brands in an industry not vigorously regulated.

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