Researchers found evidence to suggest that men who contract COVID-19 coronavirus may have reduced fertility – due to damaged sperm cells, according to new study published in the journal Reproduction.
COVID-19 can decrease the reproductive capacity of men
COVID-19 disease can kill sperm and inflame testicles, which can damage the sperm production process and reduce men’s ability to conceive children.
“These effects on sperm are associated with lower sperm quality and reduced fertility potential,” said Behzad Hajizadeh Maleki – a doctoral student from Justice Leipzig University in Germany – MedicalXpress reports. “While these effects tended to improve over time, they remained significantly and abnormally higher in the COVID-19 patients, and the magnitude of these changes was also related to disease severity.”
Men can contract the virus from direct viral invasion during sexual encounters, after which the virus begins to alter the reproductive processes necessary to maintain sexual characteristics, the study said. Once this has happened, “a secondary viral infection-induced inflammatory response” can occur in the testes, and the nominal febrile response to infection also interferes with healthy reproductive physiology.
The reproductive system of men should be regarded as a high risk organ
“The above mechanisms often coexist and have a synergistic effect in mediating the disorder,” the new study said.
These recent findings add to the ongoing study of the effects of COVID-19 and show us that men recovering from COVID-19 may have a hard time conceiving children – due to abnormally low sperm quality. Therefore, health professionals must constantly monitor and analyze the reproductive functions of men after a coronavirus infection so that reproductive problems can be avoided in the future.
“The results of this study also suggest that the male reproductive system should be considered a vulnerable pathway of COVID-19 infection and declared a high-risk organ by the World Health Organization,” adds Maleki, MedicalXpress reports.
Men were more interested in cryogenic freezing of sperm
More comprehensive studies are needed to validate the conclusions of this study – and to specify exactly how COVID-19 affects fertility and reproduction in men. But this ambiguity adds to a pandemic-long line of studies that point to a real danger to men’s reproductive capacity after recovery from the virus.
While we don’t know when more concrete answers will come, there is a way to get around the reduced fertility that many men have already turned to.
Since April last year, business had skyrocketed for companies sending returnable conservable semen sample collection kits – allowing men to store cryogenically viable human semen for later use.
Men may soon have options for resisting the COVID-19 effects
It’s sad to see, but on a biological level, it seems that men endure a worse fate than women due to the biological effects of COVID-19, according to a blog post from Johns Hopkins University.
“Around the world, on every continent, we see that men are significantly more likely to be hospitalized with severe COVID-19, and men are also significantly more likely to die from COVID-19,” said Johns Hopkins biologist Sabra. Small in the blog post.
The future may seem grim for men – who are more likely than women to be hospitalized, die, and become less fertile from a severe COVID-19 infection. But as scientists begin to understand how the virus affects male reproductive systems and vaccines circulate worldwide, we can finally say that men will soon have viable options for saving their lives, and that of the next generation.