Vasectomy Could Increase Men's Risk of Type of Dementia

Filed in archive Cases , Studies on February 19, 2007

An unusual form of dementia - Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) - has been discovered by researchers of Northwestern University in men who had vasectomy.

Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is a neurological disease in which people have trouble recalling and understanding words, the suffering patients lose the ability to express themselves and understand speech - as opposed to a typical Alzheimer's disease in which the person's memory is what becomes impaired.

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.

Sandra Weintraub, principal investigator and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurology at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, explains that the study results don't mean that vasectomy will give men PPA but could indicate that it is risk factor for this type of dementia.

Find more details from the full report.