Tante Wippen (imported) wrote: Wed Apr 15, 2015 2:54 am
Some years ago I came across an article that stated that once a testicle became inflammed due to testicular torsion it was likely that the immune system would then attack BOTH testicles causing bilateral testicular atrophy, though this "effect" is only restricted to post pubertal males. To date I have never seen any other reference to this phenomena, so how valid this claim is, is open to conjecture! The reason for mentioning this possibility it that someone wishing only to kill one testicle using methods such as the burdizzo clamp or injections etc., might be in for a bit of a surprise especially if they have any plans for having sproglets. If that is the case then bank first, inject latter is the bast course of action.
I've seen reference to it in college immunology books.
T-cell training occurs during prenatal development - t cells are trained to ignore proteins making up the body.
Testicular development occurs during puberty, long after T cells are done. Inevitably, one of them is statistically certain to be autoreactive to either sperm or at least one epitope (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitope) any of the - if I remember correctly - 999 documented novel proteins occurring only inside the testicle, beyond the blood-testis barrier (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2% ... is_barrier), where if the immune system could get in there a severe inflammatory response would happen.
The antibodies would recruit cytotoxic cells like the natural-killer cell (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_killer_cell) to begin destroying tagged cells and proteins, resulting in necrosis. Necrosis spills intracellular contents, exposing more exciting proteins to the immune system.
This will then compound as macrophages crawl into the testicle, through the (now leaking) blood-testicle barrier, and continue destroying cells and further recruiting more white blood cells, which have now proliferated into a large army of PLEASE DIE NOW.
Soon, you'll have balls the size of limes that produce nothing but inflammatory cytokines (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine).
Source: I set the curve in college immunology and easily aced pathogenic microbiology.