r/science • u/calliope_kekule Professor | Social Science | Science Comm • 2d ago
Health A new study found COVID-19 infection significantly reduced sperm count, motility, and increased DNA fragmentation, potentially affecting male fertility.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-94570-5149
u/SaltZookeepergame691 1d ago
Figure 2 just illustrates what a farce this analysis is?
People with “post-COVID” samples available have completely different pre-infection sperm from those “controls” at the same time point.
The differences between the groups are bigger before than after!
How they got these controls and the timelines is also very unclear.
In the longitudinal study, in order to provide control groups for the longitudinal (before and after, respectively) comparison of the COVID-19 positive group, we additionally recruited patients unaffected by the infection (COVID-19 negative group) who could provide two consecutive semen samples (former and latter, respectively) right over the same period of time.
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u/quackerzdb 2d ago
Data quality doesn't seem great. I just skimmed it, but it seems that the time between collections wasn't fixed; they mentioned a median time of 115 days but no other info as far as I saw. Also the negative control showing a positive correlation is suspect to me. You're making comparisons to that; it should behave predictably otherwise what good is the comparison? Feel free to correct me, I did only skim.
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u/SaltZookeepergame691 1d ago
Thought the same. Figure 2 illustrates very clearly that the control and pre-infection groups are completely different at the supposed “baseline” (allegedly collected at the same time, but they are very cryptic).
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u/MooseKick4 1d ago edited 23h ago
haha so all participants were already attending a fertility clinic? and their COVID was self reported…retrospectively…
Very weak. I know it’s a standard peer review journal with a seemingly junior research team - but it’s under the Nature umbrella so you’d expect more integrity.
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u/megatronchote 1d ago
Bogus study. I remember reading one of similar sloppy methodologies stating that the vaccines did the same to sperm count.
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u/fahque650 2d ago
Damn, good thing the first time I got COVID was at the hospital for the birth of my second (and last) child.
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u/IssueEmbarrassed8103 2d ago
So another mechanism by which anti vaxers are removing themselves from the gene pool.
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u/karamielkookie 1d ago
Tbh I don’t think that the Covid vaccines are effective enough to say this, especially since vaccination has waned. A lot of people are suspicious of the Covid vaccines and even blame them for the negative effects of the virus itself. The best way to prevent Covid is a well fitted respirator.
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u/demonicneon 1d ago
Okay but a vaccine isn’t about 100% prevention. It’s about prevention, and reducing the damage a disease can do to you. ie you might still get covid but you won’t die a horrible painful death wheezing and gasping for air as you slowly drown in your own lungs.
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u/karamielkookie 1d ago
Of course that’s true about vaccines. However I don’t think we have any evidence that the Covid vaccine protects against the damage done to male fertility, so it’s not really relevant here. Being an anti vaxxer doesn’t seem to remove men from the gene pool in regards to Covid specifically.
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u/Swampcardboard 1d ago
I'm not sure why people are disagreeing with this. I am pro vaccine and have gotten it for COVID, flu etc. every year. Pretty much everyone in leadership and in the media was saying to help 'prevent the spread of COVID' to get their vaccine. You can even still find old news articles up about it. They lied/withheld information from us and let it rip.
Here is a quotation from an article I found in USA TODAY from 2021: "'This is false information,' Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University, said in an email. 'Vaccines provide significant protection from 'getting it' – infection – and 'spreading it' – transmission – even against the delta variant.'"
Here is a news article from Reuters from last year, explaining how Pfizer did not even test if the vaccines helped reduce viral transmission: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/preventing-transmission-never-required-covid-vaccines-initial-approval-pfizer-2024-02-12/
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u/karamielkookie 1d ago
I’m not sure why people are disagreeing with this either. The government absolutely lied about the impact and efficacy of the vaccine. I got Covid several times fully vaccinated and I had doctors disbelieving it was possible. I vaxxed and relaxed, but that didn’t protect me from Covid because it’s airborne and it didn’t prevent damage. I’m now 31 and disabled from Covid so I know from personal experience and from my research I’m not alone at all.
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u/Alienhaslanded 1d ago
Last time I got the vaccine it was in October of 2023. That was my sixth dose. I got sick with COVID at the end of November of that same year. It was rough, but without the vaccine it would've been worse trying to fight it with my garbage immune system.
Vaccines give you an armor. They don't make you invincible.
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u/karamielkookie 1d ago
Yes, I agree, vaccines don’t make you invincible. I don’t think they offer enough protection against the negative impacts of COVID to say that anti-vaxxers are being removed from the gene pool though.
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u/Alienhaslanded 1d ago
Yeah, that's silly. It's not like antixxers stopped having kids, and boy do those people love making kids.
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u/karamielkookie 18h ago
Yes but the original comment wasn’t about them wanting to have kids but rather being impeded by the negative impacts of the virus. From the other comments the study wasn’t good enough to actually come to that conclusion. If it is true that the virus reduces male fertility I think both vaccinated and unvaccinated people would be impacted because the vaccine doesn’t work well enough to stop people from getting infected.
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u/Alienhaslanded 18h ago
What I meant was if there's a difference then the study would show a motility gap between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated who were previously infected with COVID.
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u/ThirstforSin 1d ago
The immunological response from the vaccination reduced Epigenetic Horvath Clock estimates by a couple years , less than the virus but still noticeable enough, wouldn’t be surprised if studies later onwards show the same trend after continuous vaccination year on year. The same logic can be applied to this circumstance
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u/Reaper_456 1d ago
I wonder if it will return to baseline once the body replaces it cells yearly. I also can see people using these studies to be trolls to say anti vaxxers.
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u/BowsersMuskyBallsack 1d ago
So the idiots who don't get vaccinated are less likely to breed successfully? Nice.
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u/mintymoose 4h ago
Except vaccinated people still got covid. I say that as someone vaccinated, but it didn’t prevent you from getting it, just reduced the symptoms.
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