Is HPV Secretly Harming Male Fertility? Shocking New Study Reveals Risk of Silent Sperm Killer | Health

Men who carry the high-risk form of the cervical cancer virus, or HPV, have higher levels of dead sperm, negatively affecting their fertility, a new study finds.

Human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection, includes high-risk and low-risk viruses. The former is known to pose a high risk of developing malignant tumors and the latter is known to cause largely benign warts or marks, the researchers explain in the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.

Argentine researchers, including those from the National University of Córdoba, examined the sperm quality of 205 adult men.

About a fifth of them, or 39, tested positive for HPV: 20 carried the high-risk form of the virus, seven carried the low-risk form, and 12 in whom the team could identify neither high nor low risk. The 39 HPV-positive men were compared with 43 HPV-negative men.

Although the sperm quality of the men in these groups did not differ, upon closer inspection, the researchers found that samples taken from men infected with the high-risk virus contained significantly lower numbers of immune cells known to help fight infection – CD45 white blood cells.

Lead author Virginia Rivero explained that the lower number of immune cells seen in these samples was a result of HPV’s known ability to evade an immune response.

This would cause fewer white blood cells to travel to the site of HPV infection, impairing their ability to clear the infection, said Rivero, a professor at the National University of Córdoba.

The researchers also found evidence that sperm from men infected with the high-risk version of HPV may suffer repeated damage due to oxidative stress, as judged by the elevated production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in these men.

Although low levels of ROS are a product of normal sperm function, high levels can lead to breakdown of the cells’ outer shell, breakage of genetic material, and cell death.

Consistent with these results, the researchers found a higher number of dead sperm in HPV-positive men carrying the high-risk virus.

“…higher frequencies of ROS-dead sperm were shown in individuals infected with HR-HPV compared to those infected with LR-HPV genotypes,” the authors wrote.

“We concluded that men infected with high-risk HPV, but not men infected with low-risk HPV, have increased sperm death due to oxidative stress and a weakened local immune response in the urogenital tract,” Rivero said.

The findings suggest that men infected with the high-risk form of the virus may have impaired fertility, Rivero said.

The high-risk form of HPV can be detected in almost all cervical cancers in women and in a high number of anal, genital, and mouth and throat cancers in both women and men, the authors explained.

The low-risk form of HPV is usually detectable in abnormal but benign cervical cells in women and in warts on the surface of the larynx (voice box) and genitals in both men and women, but does not cause cancer, they said.