The effect of COVID-19 on male fertility

Abstract

COVID-19 infection spread across the world in November of 2019. Since then there have been a great number of deaths as well as additional side effects from people infected with this virus. COVID is known to affect the heart, brain, lungs, and kidneys. In this paper, the data collected thus far was reviewed and a possible medical cause of infertility is suggested. In the majority of the medical literature examined, it appears that the COVID-19 virus does not directly attack and damage the testes. The data indicates that the major cause is an inflammatory response of the immune system in reaction to the infection. Once the body detects this foreign attack, it releases multiple cytokines to fight off the virus. Many times it is the immune systems’ overreaction to an antigen that causes more damage to the body than the virus itself. The data can be viewed as conflicting, as there is a small sample size and a limited amount of available studies, but a common trend has been found which suggests the damage to be inflammatory in nature.