Abstract
Since severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first discovered, there have been questions surrounding the effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and more recently the COVID-19 vaccine, on men’s health and fertility. Significant research has been conducted to study viral tropism, potential causes for gender susceptibility, the impact of COVID-19 on male sexual function in the acute and recovery phases, and the effects of the virus on male reproductive organs and hormones. This review provides a recent assessment of the literature regarding the impact of COVID-19 and its vaccine on male sexual health and reproduction.
Highlights
Since severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, there have been over 186,000,000 confirmed cases and over 4,000,000 deaths worldwide attributed to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19)
This study suggested that the testes may be a target of COVID-19 infection due to its high expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2); these findings are limited as they are based on a very small sample size with high risk of bias given the non-blinded nature of the study
One study did not compare patients who had recovered from COVID-19 to controls but found that the mean LH level was 3.95 mIU/mL, which is within the normal range [25]
Summary
Since severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, there have been over 186,000,000 confirmed cases and over 4,000,000 deaths worldwide attributed to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19) (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/). One study did not compare patients who had recovered from COVID-19 to controls but found that the mean testosterone level was 3.65 ng/ml, which is within the normal range [25] It is not clear if the increases in LH and decrease in testosterone are related to febrile illness or from the direct effects of SARS-CoV2 on testicular cells, but Temiz did show that the decrease in testosterone during active infection seems to be temporary and there is at least partial recovery after treatment and Kadihasanoglu found that there was a difference in LH and testosterone level in those with COVID-19 versus nonCOVID-19 upper respiratory tract infections [33, 38]. Most studies showed a statistically significant decrease in semen concentration, total sperm count, and total motile count [24–26, 28, 35, 40]
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