Posted on 03/02/2007 3:35:02 AM PST by cinives
CHICAGO, Illinois, March 1, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered a link between vasectomy surgery and a form of dementia that usually strikes men in their 40’s and 50’s.
Known as Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), the disease targets the language center of the brain, causing victims to have difficulty remembering and understanding words. People afflicted with PPA lose the ability to talk and understand speech, and gradually deteriorate in other areas of function until they are fully incapacitated.
Lead researcher Dr. Sandra Weintraub, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and or neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, discovered a potential link between the disease and vasectomy surgery during a regular support meeting for PPA patients. One man who had developed language problems at age 43 referenced the start of his difficulty to the period following his surgery for vasectomy. He asked the nine men in the group who were suffering from PPA how many had undergone a vasectomy, and eight of the nine said they had.
Weintraub led a team of researchers who surveyed 47 men aged 55 to 80 with language-based dementia and found that 40 percent had undergone vasectomies, compared to 16 percent of the control group who did not have cognitive impairment.
“That’s a huge difference,” Weintraub said. “It doesn’t mean having a vasectomy will give you this disease, but it may be a risk factor to increase your chance of getting it.”
Men who had a vasectomy and developed the disease showed symptoms at a younger age (58 years) than men who developed PPA without having the surgery (62 years).
A second form of early-onset dementia also seemed to be linked to vasectomy surgery, the study found, with preliminary results showing 37 percent of men with frontotemporal dementia had undergone a vasectomy. The results were taken from a small group of 30 men and require further research to confirm a link.
Weintraub speculated that the disease may be triggered in part by antibodies formed in the blood of men who have vasectomies--during surgery the natural barrier designed to keep blood-born pathogens away from semen is breached, and sperm can enter the blood system. In 60 to 70 percent of cases, the body will react to the sperm as invasive and produce antibodies against it, which may then breach the blood-brain barrier and lead to the onset of PPA.
Weintraub plans to launch a national study to show if her preliminary results will be consistent in a larger population.
In a study released last June, a team of Thai researchers found a rate of severe chromosomal abnormality 10 times higher than normal in sperm taken from men with vasectomies. Sperm production continues after the surgery, leading to a build up of old, disintegrating sperm within the epididymus. Scarring and occasional rupture of the epididymus frequently occur, with further sperm breakdown.
While chromosomal abnormality rates did improve somewhat over time when the man under went a vasectomy reversal, researchers found chromosomal malformation rates remained abnormally high.
Momma always said to think with the big head, not the little one...
I always thought that letting Your Boyz loose inside your own body might not be the brightest thing you could do.
HAHAHAHA!!!
So that's what happened to my typing.
So you're saying they have gone......"nut's"?
It's interesting that something produced by your own body might cause you harm.
Yeah - I thought this was scrappleface, at first.
Boyz gone wild...
How's your telepathy ?
ping
This is why no one should mess with their bodies. There are things in there that are not fully understood yet.
Taking/altering parts in it or mutilating it as if it were some kind of machine with each part dedicated to specific, discrete function, is bound to get people into trouble.
If it ain't broken, DON'T fix it.
When I was you know, I had the thingy done, and now I have no trouble with the whatsit or the whatchamacallit.
This has been known for many years. What is new here is the linking of it to a specific condition.
I'm not a medical person but how can they think that a procedure that doesn't stop the production of material but simply frustrates it's normal path can be a good idea?
Well I just gotta offer my two cents here.
Does anybody remember when the big thing was that vasectomies cause heart trouble?
Yeah, that was back in the 80's or thereabouts.
Come on. It seems like the entire world is out to prevent men from having vasectomies with these health lies.
Cause I don't believe it for a minute. Hey, I believed that heart thing too but it was bogus.
How comes you never hear about bad, bad things that happen to women who have their tubes tied?
Ask any woman. She'll tell you those little buggers are nothing but trouble.
When man starts messing with the design for his own convenience, it should not be at all surprising that bad things happen.
It's sort of like marriage?
I was thinking the same thing. You beat me to it.
autoimmunity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmunity
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