My younger brother and his family came visiting about 3 days ago and hope to spend up to a week with us. It is a mini family reunion and this has taken a bit of my attention away from Hive and curation activities. But not enough to prevent me from squeezing out the time to write this post.
Just this morning, my brother called me into one of the rooms in the house and asked me to examine the scrotal sac of his last born who is barely 2 years old. At first, I was confused because I did not know exactly what he wanted me to check. Then he explained that the mother, his own wife, has mentioned a few times that there are no testicles in the scrotal sac of the boy.
I went ahead to examine the scrotal sac of the little toddler and truly, there is nothing to indicate the presence of testicles. A normal scrotal sac should have, at least, a testicle. Knowing fully well that cold temperatures and anxiety have the tendency to instigate the retraction of testicles into the groin, I tried to play down the situation.
Playing down the situation is largely due to the fact that the weather around here recently has been generally on the very cold side as far as the normal tropical climate is concerned. Worse still, the testicular examination was done in the morning, which is normally cold even during hot periods. I simply explained that it could be due to the cold.
However, the scientist in me will not just let me rest. I thought for a while and started asking some germane questions. How long have you observed this? are there any periods where you were able to feel the testicles? I wanted to convince myself that this is just a surreptitious event and nothing more.
Unfortunately, all the answers I was expecting to confirm my hypothesis were negative. It seems we have got a case of undescended testicles on our hands. We are now looking forward to meeting a doctor to access the little boy over the coming days.
Testicular abnormalities
The first time I heard about undescended testicles was in Introductory Genetics class during my undergraduate days. The term was used in relation to non-disjunction during meiosis, leading to monosomy and trisomy conditions (Turner and Down syndromes respectively).
It is a condition in which the testicles of a male child refuse to descend from the groin region into the scrotal sac. Normally, the testicles of male babies descend from the abdominal region into the scrotal sac a few days or weeks before birth. In some cases, they may not fully descend before birth but do so before the baby clocks six months old.
If after six months, the testicles are still yet to descend, this result in an abnormal situation known as undescended testicles, and thus, will require further medical checks and treatments. In some cases, descended testicles may retract upward temporarily due to involuntary muscle contraction - a condition known as testicular retraction.
This condition has been reported to be due to overactive cremaster muscles - the muscle that covers and controls the testes. When an upward retraction of testicles that have previously descended becomes permanent, this results in a medical condition known as ascending testicles.
Are there known causes?
Undescended testes adds to eons of other abnormalities plaguing humans whose causes are not known. Many have tried and guesses have been made, however. Many of these guesses are based on correlation. But as we usually say in science, correlation does not equal causation.
One of the factors that seem to have some correlations with undescended testes includes being given birth to prematurely. Of course, this follows logically since testes do not descend until some weeks before full term. Interestingly, however, not all premature babies have undescended testicles. Other factors include Down syndrome, low birth weights, family history of undescended testicles, etc.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the risk factors associated with undescended testicles applies to the case of my nephew, if my suspicion is confirmed by competent doctors. Only time will tell and I intend to blog about it.
What about treatments?
Retracting testicles often do not require any treatment as they are usually painless and only temporary. Ascending and undescended testicles, however, may lead to secondary conditions such as infertility and testicular cancer. Thus, both conditions require medical treatment.
For ascending testicles, the treatment may be in the form of carefully guiding the testicles down into the scrotal sac without any form of surgery. In case the latter fails, the next would be to take the surgery option. For undescended testicles, the only way out is surgery.
The surgery is often a minor one that involves cutting open the groin and guiding the testes down to the scrotal sac permanently. Even at that, I anxiously hope that this will not be the case for my nephew.
Do you have any experience with testicular abnormality? Feel free to share below.
Thank you for reading through.
