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Hum. Reprod. Advance Access published online on February 6, 2007
Human Reproduction, doi:10.1093/humrep/dem010
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Immune-related disease before and after vasectomy: an epidemiological database study

M.J. Goldacre1, C.J. Wotton, V. Seagroatt and D. Yeates

Unit of Health-Care Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

1 To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Unit of Health-Care Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Old Road Campus, Oxford OX3 7LF, UK. Tel.: +44 01865 226994; Fax: +44 01865 226993; E-mail: michael.goldacre{at}dphpc.ox.ac.uk

BACKGROUND: Vasectomy can be followed by an autoimmune-antibody response. We aimed to determine whether men with immune-related diseases were more or less likely than others to have a vasectomy and then to determine whether vasectomy is associated with the subsequent development of immune-related diseases.

METHODS: A database of linked records of hospital statistics was analysed. By comparing a population of men who underwent vasectomy with a reference population, we calculated the rate ratios for selected immune-related diseases before and after vasectomy.

RESULTS: Some diseases studied (e.g. asthma and diabetes mellitus) were a little less common, prior to operation, in the vasectomy group than in the reference group. Others were not different. The mean period of follow-up was 13 years. We found no long-term elevation of risk following vasectomy of asthma, diabetes mellitus, ankylosing spondylitis, thyrotoxicosis, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis or testicular atrophy. There was a short-term elevation of risk of orchitis/epididymitis.

CONCLUSIONS: In this large study, with many years of follow-up, we found no evidence that vasectomy increases the subsequent long-term risk of immune-related diseases.

Key words: epidemiology/immune-related disease/record linkage/vasectomy

Submitted on June 9, 2006; resubmitted on October 25, 2006; resubmitted on December 27, 2006; accepted on January 2, 2007.


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