On March 26, media reports said that sex hormone levels provided the first clinical evidence of a new coronavirus affecting male gonads. The clinical evidence comes from a paper recently uploaded by Zhang Ming, associate professor of the Center for Reproductive Medicine of Wuhan University’s Central South Hospital, and others on a website, which lists the basic data of 81 male patients with COVID-19. Zhongnan Hospital responded to the Beijing News reporter that there is no exact conclusion about the research on the effect of COVID-19 virus on male reproductive function. The paper has not been published, and Associate Professor Zhang Ming is still in the research stage.
Recently, Zhang Ming, associate professor of the Center for Reproductive Medicine, Wuhan University Zhongnan Hospital, and others uploaded a paper on the MedRxiv platform entitled “Effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection upon the effects of COVID-19 infection on male gonadal function” male gonadal function: A single center-based study).
MedRxiv website is a free, non-profit service platform jointly operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, BMJ, and Yale University. It is used to publish complete but unpublished research manuscripts, that is, articles will not be peer-reviewed before being published online.
According to media reports, Zhang Ming’s team at the Reproductive Medicine Center of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University conducted a retrospective study on serum samples of 81 male patients with COVID-19. These patients were admitted to Wuhan Lei Shenshan Hospital from March 5 to March 18, ranging in age from 20 to 54 years.
Zhang Ming’s team compared 81 COVID-19 patients with 100 healthy men of similar age and found that the former had a significant increase in serum luteinizing hormone (LH) and prolactin levels, while the ratio of testosterone to follicle stimulating hormone relative to LH was significant reduce.
LH is a glycoprotein gonadotropin secreted by pituitary cells, which can promote the conversion of cholesterol into sex hormones in gonadal cells. The authors believe that although semen parameters are a direct reflection of gonad function, the changes in the above indicators also provide the first indirect clinical evidence for COVID-19 virus attacking testicular function.
Regarding the above-mentioned research, the Propaganda Department of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University responded to a reporter from the Beijing News that the research project of Associate Professor Zhang Ming did exist, and related papers had not been published yet, and it was still in the research stage. “The impact of COVID-19 virus on male reproductive function is just a research direction, and the research results have not yet been formed. At present, there are some data to support the research, but there is no large amount of data to support it.”