In December 2019 and January 2020, novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) - infected pneumonia (NCIP) occurred in Wuhan, and has already posed a serious threat to public health. ACE2 (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2) has been shown to be one of the major receptors that mediate the entry of 2019-nCoV into human cells, which also happens in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS). Several researches have indicated that some patients have abnormal renal function or even kidney damage in addition to injury in respiratory system, and the related mechanism is unknown. This arouses our interest in whether coronavirus infection will affect the urinary and male reproductive systems. Here in this study, we used the online datasets to analyze ACE2 expression in different human organs. The results indicate that ACE2 highly expresses in renal tubular cells, Leydig cells and cells in seminiferous ducts in testis. Therefore, virus might directly bind to such ACE2 positive cells and damage the kidney and testicular tissue of patients. Our results indicate that renal function evaluation and special care should be performed in 2019-nCoV patients during clinical work, because of the kidney damage caused by virus and antiviral drugs with certain renal toxicity. In addition, due to the potential pathogenicity of the virus to testicular tissues, clinicians should pay attention to the risk of testicular lesions in patients during hospitalization and later clinical follow-up, especially the assessment and appropriate intervention in young patients' fertility.
### Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
### Funding Statement
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81802565 and 81773014), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant no. BK20180216), Key Project of the Scientific Research Project of Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Suzhou Hospital (grant no. szslyy2017005).
### Author Declarations
All relevant ethical guidelines have been followed; any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained and details of the IRB/oversight body are included in the manuscript.
Yes
All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived.
Yes
I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).
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I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.
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In this article, we made use of some online renal single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) gene expression data sets that were publicly usable. These contained the data reported in GSE131685 and GSE107585. We used RNA and protein expression data of ACE2 in different human tissues and cancer cell lines through The Human Protein Atlas portal (Website: http://www.proteinatlas.org/) , GTEx portal (Website: https://gtexportal.org) and The Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) . All data are available directly online.