Young men may have another reason to get their HPV vaccine. A new study this month found that men infected with the human papillomavirus had increased counts of dead sperm compared to others. The findings suggest that HPV may worsen male fertility, the researchers said.
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted virus, which almost everyone is expected to contract during their lifetime. But there are more than 200 types of virus out there, and there are important differences between them. Some types will cause no problems at all, while others will cause unpleasant, if not dangerous, symptoms such as genital warts. But high-risk types of HPV can remain in the body, causing changes in infected cells that raise the risk of various cancers. High-risk HPV infection causes almost all cases of cervical cancer in women, but also accounts for most cases of penile cancer in men and cancers of the anus, throat, and mouth in both men and women.
Scientists in Argentina conducted the latest research, hoping to better understand how dangerous HPV infection can affect men’s health. They analyzed sperm samples from more than 200 men who visited the same urology clinic sometime between 2018 and 2021. About 20 percent of these men tested positive for HPV, 20 of which apparently had high-risk HPV.
Using standardized tests, researchers initially found no significant difference in sperm quality between men with and without high-risk HPV. But their more sensitive test found that high-risk HPV cases tended to have a higher percentage of dead sperm compared to men with low-risk HPV or no disease. Men at higher risk of HPV are also more likely to have lower levels of white blood cells in their semen, as well as greater oxidative stress. The team’s findings were published this month in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
“We concluded that men infected with HR-HPV, but not men infected with LR-HPV, show increased sperm count due to oxidative stress and a weakened immune response in the urogenital area,” said senior researcher Virginia Rivero, professor i -Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina, in a statement from Frontiers, the publishers of the course. “These results suggest that men with HR-HPV are more likely to have impaired fertility.”
The findings are based on a very small sample size of men that may not be representative of the general population. So more research will be needed to confirm whether high-risk HPV can really harm men’s sperm quality and fertility at the population level. The researchers also plan to investigate whether having other sexually transmitted infections in addition to HPV may affect men’s reproductive health.
Given the already known risks of these diseases, however, deriving any sterility protection from the HPV vaccine would be icing on the cake. The new HPV vaccines are aimed at preventing infections from the most common types that cause warts and cancer. Currently, all children and young adults in the US under the age of 26 are recommended to get the HPV vaccine (two or three doses depending on age), although people over the age of 45 may still benefit from it.
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