Men are more at risk of suffering severe bouts of coronavirus because the disease "lingers" in the testicles, a new study has found.
Researchers tracking the recovery of 68 patients in Mumbai, India, found that the virus took a much worse toll on men. Dr Aditi Shastri, an oncologist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, led the research along with her mother Dr Jayanthi Shastri, a microbiologist at the Kasturba Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Mumbai.
They found that Covid-19 latches onto a protein known angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) which is found in large quantities in the testicles.
ACE2 is also found in the lungs, the gastrointestinal tract and the heart. Since testicles are walled off from the rest of the