Shilajit for Male Infertility
Shilajit earns a weak (Tier C) rating for male infertility: a few small, mostly industry-linked studies hint at higher testosterone and sperm counts, but the evidence is too thin, and the heavy-metal contamination risk too real, to recommend it as a fertility treatment.
Why this grade7-layer evidence engine
The grade is held back by how little direct human evidence exists. Only one trial enrolled men with low sperm counts (Biswas 2010, PMID 20078516), and it was open-label with no placebo group and just 28 completers, so its reported +61.4% sperm count and +23.5% testosterone gains carry low certainty. The one rigorous double-blind RCT (Pandit 2016, PMID 26395129) tested healthy men aged 45-55, not infertile patients, and measured only hormones (total testosterone +20.45%), with no sperm or pregnancy outcomes at all.
Higher-tier evidence is essentially absent. A 2023 systematic review of testosterone boosters (PMID 37697053) judged shilajit only 'possibly effective' for late-onset hypogonadism, again on a testosterone surrogate rather than fertility. The only fertility-specific support comes from a mouse cadmium-toxicity model (PMID 29947420), which is preclinical and not transferable to typical human infertility. No study has measured natural conception or live-birth rates.
Regulators and clinicians reinforce the caution. The AUA/ASRM male-infertility guidance calls supplement benefits of 'questionable clinical utility' with data inadequate to recommend any specific agent, and Cleveland Clinic notes the shilajit studies are over a decade old with very small samples. EFSA treats it as a non-novel supplement without approved health claims, while WHO/Health Canada and the NHS stress purification, capped mineral intake, and avoiding unlicensed herbals because raw shilajit can carry lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury.
Scoring transparency
All scores computed by a 7-layer evidence engine — fully auditable▸View the full decision path (audit trail)
- compute_raw_score — 加權公式: L2×0.30 + L3×0.25 + L5×0.25 + L11×0.10 + L1×0.10 = 0.542
- tier_from_score — 依分數區間映射至 tier letter
- apply_hec_rules — 無高階證據可裁決
- tier_strict_requirement_check — Tier 條件達標，未降階
- detect_disputes — 偵測到 0 個 hard + 0 個 soft dispute
- decide_status — 依 tier + dispute 結果決定 status