Is a vasectomy bad for your brain?

Getting a vasectomy might increase a man's risk of a baffling brain disease, a study has found.

The disease, primary progressive aphasia, gradually destroys patients' ability to talk, read and write. PPA often begins when patients are in their 40s and 50s.

Northwestern University medical school researchers compared 47 men with PPA with 57 men of similar age and education who had normal mental abilities.

Forty percent of the PPA patients had had vasectomies, compared with 16 percent of those in the control group.

In the PPA group, men who had vasectomies developed the disease on average four years earlier than those who didn't have vasectomies.

The study is published in the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology.

Researchers cautioned that results are preliminary.

'Don't want to scare anyone'
"I don't want to scare anyone away from getting a vasectomy," said lead researcher Sandra Weintraub.

Weintraub hopes to do a follow-up study with a larger sample size.

In a vasectomy, the doctor snips tubes that carry sperm from the testicles to the penis. This allows sperm to leak into the bloodstream. Previous studies found that in many men, the immune system produces antibodies that attack sperm in the bloodstream. Weintraub said it's possible these sperm-fighting antibodies also might attack brain cells.

Vasectomies might be linked to a similar disease called frontotemporal dementia. FTD is the second-leading cause of dementia illness after Alzheimer's disease. Of the 30 men in Northwestern's FTD registry, 37 percent had had vasectomies.

Jeff Hawkinson of Peoria had a vasectomy at age 40 and developed FTD at age 53. His wife, Cathi, was "totally shocked" after learning about the possible vasectomy link.

"He did it for me," she said.

Source:Suntimes