COVID-19 and its after-effects pose a risk to the reproductive health of men, whereas vaccination does not appear to affect the fertility of males or females, scientists from Boston University said in the wake of recent research.
According to the scientific team, they enrolled 2,126 self-identified females living in the United States or Canada between December 2020 and September 2021 and followed them through November 2021.
"We fit proportional probabilities regression models to estimate associations between self-reported COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection in both partners with fecundability, the per-cycle probability of conception, adjusting for potential confounders," the study's abstract said.
It turned out that the vaccination did not have any discernable effects in either men or women. However, men who were infected with COVID within 60 days of their partner's menstrual cycle were 18 percent less likely to conceive during that cycle compared with those who did not test positive for coronavirus.
"There's not necessarily any harm in trying to conceive shortly after having Covid, but it may just take a bit longer," Amelia Wesselink, the study's co-author and research assistant professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health, told CNBC Make it.
The scientists expressed a hope that the research will help couples make informed decisions about getting vaccinated against coronavirus.
Some other unpleasant effects that coronavirus may have on men's sexual health were reported earlier in the month, when an American man revealed that his penis shrank by 1.5 inches (around 4cm) after he contracted COVID-19. Another man in Iran said he suffered severe pain in his genital area, purportedly after complications of coronavirus.