Yes, ‘COVID dick’ is real. Here’s what it means.

metroweekly.com:

published in the July 2021 World Journal of Men’s Health claimed to be “the first to demonstrate the presence of the COVID-19 virus in the penis long after the initial infection in humans,” suggesting that widespread cell damage from COVID-19 “can contribute to resultant erectile dysfunction.”Of course, that study wasn’t the last to demonstrate such a correlation.

A few months later, a University of Florida Health study published in the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation found that “men with COVID-19 are more than three times more likely to be diagnosed with erectile dysfunction, than those who are not sickened by the coronavirus.” According to the study’s lead author, Dr.

Joseph Katz, “The receptor that the coronavirus binds to is abundant on the penis and testes. The virus can bind to those areas.”More recently, the tale of a 30-something man who says his formerly above-average-sized penis had shrunk as a result of a COVID infection garnered headlines in less scientific journals, like the New York Post.For some, the alarming anecdote became fodder for sarcastic discussions of shrinkage, but scientists like Dr.

Tom Hope of Northwestern University’s Hope Laboratory in Chicago take these cases seriously. “COVID dick” may not be a technical term, but, as Hope tells Metro Weekly, “I think it is a real thing.