New Zika scare claim: It's shrinking mice testicles up to 90%, permanently damaging fertility

Tuesday, November 29, 2016 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: zika, testicles, male fertility

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(NaturalNews) Prepping the populace for an eventual rollout of a vaccine for Zika virus, medical experts are trumpeting a new warning for men everywhere: If you should happen to get bitten by a mosquito carrying the disease, you may suffer serious damage to your reproductive organs, including mass shrinkage of your testicles.

Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, recently conducted a study in which it was found that male mice exposed to Zika suffered serious adverse effects in the fertility department. Not only could the male mice no longer get their female counterparts pregnant, but their endocrine systems basically collapsed and their gonads shrunk by an astounding 90 percent.

According to reports, the mosquito-borne virus can live inside the testes of men for many months, even after it has supposedly cleared from the body via blood and urine. One man, CNN reports, continued to harbor Zika for three months after the virus is said to have left his body, and traces of the RNA that compose Zika have reportedly been found in other males' sex organs up to six months after infection.

Male testes appear to be a type of breeding ground for Zika, in some cases massively increasing the viral load even beyond the levels present at the time of infection. For this reason, experts have been warning men who travel to Zika-affected areas to always use condoms when having sex, and for a period of at least six months after potential exposure, just to be safe.

Is Zika being weaponized to destroy the male species?

For the study, researchers looked at how long it took for the Zika virus to invade the testes of infected mice. They found that the transfer occurred within just one week following exposure. After two weeks, the mice's Sertoli cells – these are responsible for secreting the androgen hormones that make a man a man – were all either dead or in the process of dying, and the mice's testes had shrunk to just a fraction of their original size.

Since Sertoli cells are also responsible for nourishing developing sperm cells and keeping a proper blood-testes barrier in place to protect these new cells during this important development phase, their loss further undermines the male essence. The end result is a cascading failure of testosterone production and a complete loss of "maleness" in those affected.

Zika was found to defy this protective barrier, resulting in the complete destruction of Sertoli cells in the affected mice. And because Sertoli cells don't regenerate, these mice were left permanently impotent with shrunken testes and an inability to reproduce.

"There is a blood-testes barrier that immune cells don't normally cross unless something is very wrong," co-senior author of the study and associate director of WU's Center for Human Immunological and Immunotherapy Programs, Dr. Michael Diamond, told CNN. "And you don't want them to cross because you don't want to eliminate germ cells, which are going to propagate the species."

Some have speculated that Zika virus might have been a weaponized tool of depopulation from its origins, the reasoning behind this being that a 1947 patent held by the Rockefeller Foundation shows that the virus was extracted from the blood of rhesus monkey in Uganda, and is now owned by one of the richest foundations in the world. Regardless, the threat to men is still the same.

"While our study was in mice – and with the caveat that we don't yet know whether Zika has the same effect in men – it does suggest that men might face low testosterone levels and low sperm counts after Zika infection, affecting their fertility," Dr. Diamond added.

Sources:

CNN.com

DailyMail.co.uk

Collective-Evolution.com