Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus in semen and testicular biopsy specimen of COVID-19 patients

Ci Song; Yan Wang; Weiqin Li; Bicheng Hu; Guohua Chen; Ping Xia; Wei Wang; Chaojun Li; Jiahao Sha; zhibin hu; Xiaoyu Yang; Bing Yao; Yun Liu

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20042333 doi: medRxiv preprint amino acid identity) similarity with SARS-Cov [25] . Also, recent studies have found that ACE2 is highly expressed in spermatogonia, Leydig and Sertoli cells in the human testis by single-cell transcriptome and bioinformatics analysis, and speculated that human testes are a potential target of 2019-nCov infection [9, 10] . However, consistent with our study, the previous systematical study reported that the cells in testis cannot be infected by SARS-CoV despite the expression of high levels of ACE2 [26] . On the other hand, although few studies previously reported orchitis as a complication of SARS [27] , which mostly due to the continuous high fever and virus-induced autoimmune response among severe patients. Hence, the presence of orchitis among SARS-infected patients could not be concluded as the virus directly targeted the testes. Further mechanism investigation of the potential virus attacks on the testes is warranted.