I admitted a patient with Primary Progressive Aphasia. This condition falls under the umbrella of dementia, but presents as an inability to speak. I was discussing this with our speech therapist when she said, "If it were a male patient I'd be curious to know if he'd had a vasectomy." What?
She went on to say that, at a speech conference, a faculty member at Northwestern Memorial Hospital mentioned there might be a link between vasectomies and the onset of Primary Progressive Aphasia. Of course, a nurse chimed in: "Can't get me pregnant and can't say a word? That's sounds like the perfect husband!"
Hardy har har, ladies.
I asked what the connection was between the testes and the brain, which of course garnered more laughter. I was eventually told that the idea is that following/during vasectomy the sperm enter the bloodstream and cause an autoimmune response that happens to target the speech centers of the brain, as well.
The next person I spoke to about this was my friend, a urologist. She was incredulous. "Those boys (sperm) don't go swimming around the blood stream. They hang out, right there, in the ball sack." By way of this discussion, I also learned that if a woman wants to get pregnant from her husband who has had the "snippety-snip," a physician can "simply" extract sperm from his sack (with a needle) without having to reverse anything. OK.
So, from what I've gathered, this link between vasectomies and brain damage (specifically for speech) is a tenuous*, controversial one. As they always say, "more research is needed."
In the meantime, it is worth noting that sperm and brain cells do have a protein in common: It's name is Tau. I'll have to check, but I don't know of tau existing anywhere else besides the brain and sperm. That connection wasn't something I was aware of until now.
If in a few years this NU hypothesis is confirmed, I know a few people who will be left speechless. . . (Couldn't help myself.)
*<50 men with Primary Progressive Aphasia were studied. That's not a lot.
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