Vasectomy, serum assays, and coronary heart disease symptoms and risk factors.

ABSTRACT

PIP: A comparative study of 69 vasectomized and 126 nonvasectomized men enrolled in the Portland (Oregon, US) Center for the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial evaluated vasectomy as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In animal studies, atherosclerosis development has been linked to circulating anti-sperm antibodies and immune complexes formed in response to sperm breakdown products released in the body after vasectomy. Vasectomized men smoked more and had lower diastolic and systolic blood pressure than men in the control group. As expected, both sperm immobilization and sperm agglutination assays were significantly higher among vasectomized men than controls; 29.4% of vasectomized men compared with only 2.5% of nonvasectomized men had sperm immobilization values of 0.3 or less, while 54.1% of vasectomized men compared with 12.5% of nonvasectomized men had sperm agglutination values of 20.0 or above. These significant differences persisted even when a variety of coronary heart disease risk factors and treatments were controlled. Multivariate analysis showed that antibody development tended to decrease with age at vasectomy and increase with time since vasectomy. In the case of sperm agglutination, the antibodies clearly increased with time since vasectomy.