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Vasectomy/dementia link?

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  • Vasectomy/dementia link?

    Story....

    Vasectomy May Put Men At Risk For Type Of Dementia

    Science Daily — Northwestern University researchers have discovered men with an unusual form of dementia have a higher rate of vasectomy than men the same age who are cognitively normal.

    The dementia is Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a neurological disease in which people have trouble recalling and understanding words. In PPA, people lose the ability to express themselves and understand speech. It differs from typical Alzheimer's disease in which a person's memory becomes impaired.

    Sandra Weintraub, principal investigator and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurology at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, began investigating a possible link between the surgery and PPA when one of her male patients connected the onset of his language problem at age 43 to the period after his vasectomy.

    At a twice-yearly Chicago support group for PPA patients Weintraub sees from around the country, the male patient rushed into the room and asked the men sitting there, "OK, guys, how many of you have PPA?" Nine hands went up.

    "How many of you had a vasectomy?" he demanded next. Eight hands shot up.

    Weintraub and her team of researchers surveyed 47 men with PPA who were being treated at Northwestern's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center and 57 men with no cognitive impairment who were community volunteers. They ranged from 55 to 80 years old.

    Of the non-impaired men, 16 percent had undergone a vasectomy. In contrast, 40 percent of the men with PPA had had the surgery.

    "That's a huge difference," said Weintraub, director of neuropsychology in the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center. "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."

    In addition, the men who had undergone a vasectomy developed PPA at a younger age (58 years) than men with PPA who hadn't had one (62 years.)
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    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

  • #2
    I'd not be surprised if it's just that men who are susceptible to PPA are more likely to voluntarily let someone "disconnect their plumbing."

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    • #3
      My thought was an immune reaction to their own sperm activating an inherited predisposition.
      Dr. Mordrid
      ----------------------------
      An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

      I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

      Comment


      • #4
        My thought was that the cohorts were far too small and were too selective for a statistically valid conclusion.

        It's like going to deep Alabama into a redneck bar and asking those who voted for GWB to raise their hand and concluding that the result was the same for the blue states. No epidemiologist would take results from patients attending a single clinic, with controls from the same locale. They would want cohorts of at least 1,000 selected at random from across the country and they would want to include confounding factors such as tobacco, drug and alcohol usage, family history of cognitive disorders etc. Another, possibly important, factor may be that those who have had a vasectomy were probably married; is a married lifestyle (possibly better fed, for example) going to make a difference, compared with that of a bachelor?

        The saving grace of this article is that it is written largely in the conditional tense and may be sufficient incentive for someone to do a serious study to establish whether there is a link or not. As it is, don't jump to conclusions, as there aren't any.
        Brian (the devil incarnate)

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        • #5
          I'll bet all the vasectomy patients were married to brow-beating women who simply subdued them over time. The memory loss would be a self-defense mechanism.

          Certainly explains some of my problems
          FT.

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