New Delhi: Covid-19 infection may affect a man’s sperm quality for months even after recovery, a new study has found.
Researchers who carried out the study in Europe said the semen itself was not found to be infectious with SARS-CoV-2 at one week or more after Covid-19 infection, but reductions in sperm motility were evident in 60 per cent of the 35 men whose samples were tested within a month after recovery and sperm counts were found to have reduced in 37 per cent them.
The study published in Fertility and Sterility on Monday said as many as 120 Belgian men with an average age of 35 years provided their semen samples at an average of 52 days after their Covid-19 symptoms went off.
“…couples with a desire for pregnancy should be warned that sperm quality after COVID-19 infection can be suboptimal,” the report said.
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The estimated recovery time could be three months, it said, but added that further follow-up studies are on to confirm this.
A study is also under way to find out if permanent damage occurred in some men who got Covid, the report said.
The samples of as many as 51 men were tested between one and two months of recovery, and the study found that 37 per cent of them had reduced sperm motility and 29 per cent had low sperm counts.
Among 34 men who gave samples at least two months after recovery, 28 per cent had impaired sperm motility and 6 per cent had low sperm count.
The report, however, specified that the severity of the infection was not correlated with sperm characteristics.
The researchers assured that the virus is not sexually transmissible through sperm.
"...we provide strong evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus cannot be sexually transmitted through sperm after convalescence from COVID-19, since none of the semen samples contained viral RNA," the authors noted.