A 67 year old man went to be operated on for a hernia in the groin (inguinal) which had appeared 10 years earlier, in Albania. The procedure is going well, until the doctors make an unexpected discovery, as pointed out Futura Healthaccording to a case study published in the Urology Case Report, on Science Direct.
A uterus in the scrotum
By opening, the surgeons noticed that one of his testicles was not in the scrotum, that he had not descended, which is nothing exceptional. Nevertheless, the pocket supposed to collect the testicle was full… of another organwhich looked like a womb.
By examining it, they discover an ovary and fallopian tubes, and also realize that the whole is attached to the testicle which has not taken its place. If this is not the first time that this anomaly has been observed, it is nevertheless very rare, the researchers note in the study that there would be between 150 and 200 cases identified to date.
Concretely, what happened? When this man was a fetus, he presented (like all of us) anatomical elements of both kinds: Müller’s ducts (which will give rise to the female genital apparatus), Wolff’s ducts (at the origin of the male device). Then, the process is as follows: one disappears in favor of the other via a genetic mechanism.
Anti-Müllerian hormone gene mutation
For men, a hormone sweeps out the Müller ducts (called anti-Müllerian hormone), testosterone continues the work and the Wolff ducts are formed. In women, no anti-Müllerian hormone, which results in the development of Müller’s ducts.
But in the case of this man, the two lived together. He has what is known as “persistent Mullerian duct syndrome”, which “in about 45% of cases, has mutations in the anti-Müllerian hormone gene“, explains Orphanet, following a genetic study involving a hundred families. If “infertility is a frequent manifestation of the disease” according to the portal of rare diseases, the man could have had 3 children before learning this news.
Sources: Futura Health, Science Direct, Orphanet.
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