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.
My former sister in law suffers from some form of early onset dementia. She is 60 years old, she looks 90 and everything is gone from her brain and her personality. She is only a shell of a person that must have everything done for her. It is so distressing and I will have to be with her at a family wedding this weekend.
The sample doesn't seem very high. Less than 100 men and all of a sudden, BOOM, "Men who got vasectomies go crazy!" is the headline you'll see in the National Enquirer.
C'mon people, we don't even know if the vasectomy had anything to do with it. Were confounders even considered by this guy?
This explains Hillary Clinton...
I noticed the small sample size too. Like seemingly every other study, we'll hear that this is bunk in a few more years.
LOL.....Good one!
Getting them toxins properly out of your body is KEY to having a good healthy lifespan.... snip the chords so they can't get out they are just going to build up and harm you..... Looks like those old theories weren't as kooky as modern science likes us to believe.
Well once upon a time I was a raving feminist.
Not that I'm proud of it.
But I totally agree with your statement about prostate cancer, which I have not heard before but hey, it's logical.
Listen...this vasectomy stuff is nonsense. I will just never forget that heart attack story as my own husband had just gotten a vasectomy and I worried myself sick. Later I found out it was a lie.
I think this is a lie too. It will come out someday because, hey, did you ever hear about global warming. Go with me here, people lie or totally make up stuff.
A vasectomy involves the cutting and sealing off of the vas deferens, the tube that leads from the testes to the penis. The cutting of this tube prevents sperm from getting out of wherever the hell the buggers are stored.
The sperm do NOT go into the bloodstream, don't tell me they do, this defies common sense. The sperm...they just die. They are little cells for God's sake, thousands of them fit on the head of a pencil!
And tell me what terrible things you've heard happen to women who have their tubes tied. I've never read a single thing but that doesn't mean it's not out there.
I really believe this vasectomy crap is put out by men who kind of invent stuff because there's some notion that men shouldn't have to subject themselves to such matters as birth control and cutting assults upon their manhood.
Although my theory above could be a throw-back to my women's lib days.
I'll just never believe that the prevention of the release of sperm causes either Alzenheimers or heart disease.
I don't care what the hell they tell me.
THANK YOU!
Please note my comments. This is such a damn pile of crap.
They're actually held in place by flexible ligaments. A vasectomy only cuts the pipeline from the testicles that allows the sperm to reach the semen and subsequently the outside world.
Doe's the same thing happen with removal of the prostate?
I have good reason for asking that.
No wonder my first wife tried to get me to undergo one! :-)
It is not good to dam up one's precious body fluids!
I commend them. Responsible demented couples don't procreate, is what I always say.
Uh oh, I'm snipped. My dementia set in long before that occurred, though.
(Cue the C&W song: Please Release Me)
I don't know why; for surely it was pre-determined.
At least, not as far as you can remember.
And yet, at the same time, never worry about teeth or fingernails!
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