The andrologist at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo Jorge Hallak claimed that men who had Covid have fertility tests affected for a long time.
According to him, the spermogram of several patients indicates, for example, that the ability of sperm to move and fertilize the egg it dropped to between 8% and 12% and remained at that level almost a year after being infected by the new coronavirus. the normal index is about 50%.
“We have seen, more and more, prolonged changes in semen and hormone quality in patients who have had COVID-19, even in those who presented a mild or asymptomatic condition”, said the researcher to FAPESP.
Hallak says hormone tests show that many patients’ testosterone levels have also plummeted after the illness.
While the normal level of this hormone is 300 to 500 nanograms per deciliter of blood (ng/dL), in patients who had Covid this index reached ranging below 200 and often between 70 and 80 ng/dL.
“It is very worrying how the new coronavirus affects the testicles, even in asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases of the disease. Among all the agents harmful to the testicles that I have studied to date, SARS-CoV-2 seems to be very active.”
In a study of 26 patients who had COVID-19, researchers found through ultrasound tests that more than half of them have severe inflammation in the epididymis – structure responsible for the storage of sperm and where they acquire the ability to move.