Vascetomy (visectomy) - vasectomies and dementia

Vasectomy (visectomy) could be connected with a rare dementia form according to scientists at the Northwestern University who has found a link in a studie of patients with vasectomies (vasectomy).

Scientists at the Northwestern University have found a connection between men with vasectomy (visectomy) and a rare dementia form when comparing with equal aged men who had not undergone a vasectomy. The rare dementia is the PPA, or Primary Progressive Aphasia. This is a brain disease with the symptom that patients will have problems with the understanding and recalling of words as well as the understanding of speech. It is different from an Alzheimer's patiemt who would have a memory impairment.

Vascetomy (visectomy) and the risk of dementia

The head scientist, professor Weintraub at the behavioral sciences, psychiatry and neurology section of the Northwest Feinberg School of Medicine started the investigation with a link between vasectomies and PPA following one of the male patients who showed symptoms of a language problem in his early fourties after a vasectomy.

Weintraub and the research group surveyed nearly 50 men with PPA, tested at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimers DC of the Northwestern. About the same amount of volunteers without any impairment in cognition were the control group, ranging from 50 to 80 years of age.

From the control group, 15% had undergone a vasectomy whereas 40% of the patients with PPA had gone through a visectomy. Professor Weintraub, neuropsychology director of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimers Disease Centra,  noted that as a massive difference. It does not mean that if you go through with a visectomy, you will get the disease. However, having a vasectamy (vascetamy) is certainly a risk factor for PPA.

A further result was that patients who had had a vascetomy (vasectomy) developed PPA at a relatively low age compared to patients with PPA who had not gone through vasectomies.

PPA will impair the patients language and speaking ability as well as the language understanding, but unusually for diseases of this type, patients will still be able to perform several complicated tasks, keep their hobbies etc for many years before any more complications occur. There are example of people gardening and having elaborate hobbies whereas when comparing to Alzheimer's, these latter patients quickly lose the ability to maintain hobbies and family life. PPA when progressing though will eventually lead to the loss of independent function.

Vasectemy (vasectamy) linked to another dementia as well

Some preliminary results of the research also appears to establish a link between another dementia type and vascetomy. It was shown that a subgroup of thirty men with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) had had vasectomies. Early symptoms of this type of dementia are changes in the personality, strange behavior and lack of judgment. Just as with PPA, this type starts at earlier ages, around 40-50.

One of prof. Weintraub's patients with FTD, while lunching in a restaurant with his family, went to the bathroom and did not return. When the family checked what was happening, they found him doing pushups on the floor of the bathroom. There are other examples of patients starting to be compulsive gamblers, shoplifters, wasting money or becoming sexually strange.

In the most common dementia form though, caused by a deterioration of the brain functions in patients over 65, professor Weintraub did not find any connection to vasectomies.

Several patients with dementia forms either PPA or FTD, have a certain brain dysfunction in common. This is totally different from Alzheimer's. The development of either language problems or behavioral problems will depend on where the condition causes the largest desctuction in the brain. With FTD patients, the major damage is to the frontal lobes while for PPA patients, the language centers, located in the left hemisphere are affected the most.

Vasectomy (visectomy) and dementia link theory

Professor Weintraub has assumed that a vascetomy could increase the risk of PPA or even FTD due to the breakage of a protection barrier between the testes and the blood, the so called blood-testis barrier. Following a visectomy, this barrier is broken and semen is mixed with the blood and this causes the immune system to react and produce anti-sperm antibodies which may be a cause of the dementia cases among men with vasectomy operations.