Male infertility often turns into a real tragedy for couples who dream of having a baby. A variety of diseases can lead to problems with fertility in men, among which there is mumps. This article will tell you about whether male infertility always occurs after mumps, and what to do in such a situation.
What it is?
Unfortunately, mumps and male infertility are often closely related. Mumps is an infectious pathology that mainly affects boys. Girls get sick about one and a half times less often than boys.
From a medical point of view, mumps is more correctly called mumps. This is a viral pathology that is transmitted from a sick child to a healthy one. The spread of mumps in the children's team, as a rule, occurs rapidly.
If a child does not have vaccinations against this dangerous infection, then he can get sick quite easily.
Doctors refer to mumps as a so-called childhood infection. The incidence is higher among children of preschool and school age. At an older age, the incidence of mumps infections tends to decrease. This is due to the fact that most schoolchildren already have vaccinations against this disease. In adulthood, the disease is extremely rare.
The name of the disease "mumps" is quite tightly entrenched among the people. The thing is that during the acute period of the disease, the face of a sick child swells up a lot. The parotid salivary glands involved in the inflammatory process increase in size and swell, which gives the face a characteristic appearance.
With parotitis, the glandular organs are mainly affected. So, the salivary and sex glands are usually involved in the infectious process. Also, a viral infection can affect the pancreas.
The danger of the disease lies in the fact that after its acute period, extremely unfavorable complications may develop in a child who has been ill. In some cases, they appear in the first few years after the illness, and sometimes they can develop after quite a long time. Some of these insidious complications can appear only in adulthood, when a man even forgets that he had mumps in childhood.
Possible consequences
One of the possible long-term complications that develop after the transferred mumps is the development of orchitis. In this case, viruses damage the testicular tissue - the main male sex glands. In this situation, the functioning of the organs responsible for reproduction may be impaired. And this can ultimately contribute to the development of male infertility.
It should be noted that the severity of adverse symptoms in orchitis may vary. So, doctors believe that the severity of orchitis may depend on how severely a particular person was ill with mumps in childhood. It is believed that with moderate and severe mumps, complications associated with impaired testicular function develop in more than half of the cases.
It often happens that orchitis is diagnosed only many years after the viral mumps. The complexity of the diagnosis is that the inflammation of the testicles is not always combined with the inflammation of the parotid salivary glands. Such an atypical clinical course of the disease may lead to the fact that the diagnosis will not be made in a timely manner.
Delaying the provision of medical care in this case will only aggravate the situation and lead to an increase in the risk of developing male infertility.
Orchitis, as a complication of mumps, can develop in a few days after the first adverse symptoms of the disease appear. Usually, clinical signs in such a situation appear one week after the end of the incubation period.
With acute orchitis, which is caused by viral mumps, the child's body temperature rises greatly. In practice, there are cases when the body temperature of sick children rises to 39-39.5 degrees. Against the background of such a high fever with orchitis, the child develops acute pain in the scrotum. The pain syndrome is usually moderate or quite intense. Pain can radiate (spread) to the lower abdomen, as well as to the thighs.
The inflamed testicle grows in size and turns red. The more pronounced the inflammatory process, the more unfavorable symptoms appear. The fever that occurs with acute viral orchitis can persist for 7-8 days. Then the body temperature gradually returns to normal. At the same time, the inflammation in the testicles decreases in the child.
Finally, the pain syndrome in the scrotum usually disappears by 10-12 days from the moment of its appearance. The child begins to feel much better. However, an improvement in the general condition indicates only the termination of the acute period of the disease. After a few months or years, a child who has been ill may develop testicular tissue atrophy. This situation most often develops if the treatment of acute orchitis was not carried out correctly.
Orchitis, unfortunately, is not the only complication that can develop with mumps. In about 20% of cases, the inflammatory process also occurs in the epididymis of the inflamed testicle. In this case, the child develops a very dangerous pathology - epididymitis. Its danger lies in the fact that it can contribute to the formation of various disorders of spermatogenesis - the biological process of the formation of male germ cells (spermatozoa). In this case, the man has a rather high risk of developing male infertility.
Mumps is a difficult pathology for boys. The viruses that cause this disease are capable of damaging many male genital organs. So, another possible complication of mumps is prostatitis - inflammation of the tissues of the prostate gland. In this case, spermatogenesis can also be impaired, which will lead to a significant decrease in the ability to naturally conceive.
Priapism is a pathology in which a painful erection develops, not associated with natural arousal. This pathological condition is one of the complications of mumps. Priapism is treated by a urologist or andrologist.
Note that problems with natural conception do not develop in all men who have had mumps in childhood. If the treatment that they were prescribed in childhood in order to eliminate the adverse symptoms of infection was selected correctly and effectively, then they do not develop any long-term consequences associated with impaired spermatogenesis.
If, during mumps, the testicles were involved in the inflammatory process with the development of acute orchitis and other pathologies of the male genital organs, then the likelihood of developing male infertility in the future increases significantly. So, it is believed that problems with natural conception can develop in 20% of cases in men who have suffered from unilateral orchitis caused by viral parotitis. If the orchitis was bilateral, then in this case the likelihood of developing male infertility increases and is already 70%.
Impact of the disease on fertility
It is believed that the older the sick child is, the higher the likelihood of developing long-term complications in the future. If an unvaccinated adult man falls ill, then, unfortunately, the prognosis for the development of complications is extremely unfavorable.
It should be noted that, despite the availability of modern methods of diagnosis and treatment, viral mumps remains a very serious problem today, which affects the development of infertility in men. Reviews of representatives of the stronger sex who have encountered this problem also confirm this. It is extremely difficult for doctors to treat male infertility resulting from mumps orchitis suffered in childhood.
What to do?
It is much easier to prevent mumps than to cure. In Russia, there is a National Vaccination Schedule, which includes the mandatory vaccination of babies against mumps. Prevention of this dangerous infection is much easier than selecting an adequate therapy regimen. Almost all doctors adhere to this postulate.
If, for some reason, the child was not vaccinated against mumps and fell ill, then in this case it is worth treating the disease only with a doctor.
"Home" self-therapy with folk methods should not be carried out. Such self-medication significantly increases the risk of developing long-term complications.
If a boy falls ill with mumps, then he must be shown to a urologist. Only a specialist can identify dangerous clinical signs of orchitis and other pathologies of the male genital organs. In this, the doctor is assisted by a clinical examination, as well as a number of auxiliary analyzes and studies.
To diagnose inflammation of the testicles, an ultrasound of the scrotum is prescribed. During the study, the doctor assesses the condition of the testicular tissue and the presence of an inflammatory process in them, and also excludes complications that can develop with viral otitis media.
For men who underwent mumps in childhood and faced difficulties in conceiving a child, doctors prescribe a mandatory sperm examination - a spermogram. This simple yet informative analysis provides information on how spermatogenesis proceeds. The spermatogram shows the "quality" of the semen. With this simple test, doctors can assess how motile and active the sperm are in order to conceive naturally.
In some cases, doctors prescribe a histological examination to assess the condition of the testicular tissue after orchitis suffered in childhood. In this case, the biological material for the examination is taken during the puncture of the testicles. Such a study is prescribed already, as a rule, in adulthood.
After establishing the nature and degree of functional disorders, doctors determine the further tactics of therapy.
To eliminate all the consequences of the disease, several therapeutic techniques are used, as a rule. It often happens that the treatment of the long-term effects of mumps is quite lengthy and expensive.
For information on what complications can arise with viral mumps, see the next video.
