Question:
Is there a relationship between BPH and erectile dysfunction?
I am young, 28, and have a current diagnosis that my symptoms could be
early BPH, prostatitis, or prostydynia. At about the same time my other
symptoms began, frequency of urination, dribbling, low flow, I began to
experience a decreased intensity of erection.
The first treatment was antibiotics, erectile function was stable but not
as intense are before. The next treatment was cardura, other symptoms
disappeared but erectile function was at about 75%. I thought this might
be a cardura side-effect, discussed with my urologist who said it was
unlikely but there were other options, we shifted to Flomax. Flomax hasn't
been as effective and I am still having the same sort of erectile issues.
So..this is my long winded way of asking what are the correlation between
bph and erectile dysfunction? Seems unlikely it is a pharmacological side
effect since I've tried two different medicines.
Answer:
There is a large NIH study ongoing called MTOPS. Although not complete,
some data on the characteristics of the patients at the time of study entry
is available. Over 40% of BPH patients had some degree/type of erectile
dysfunction. This value is much higher than impotence in the general
community which is approx 10%. This has led Anderson's group in Lund to
hypothesise that there is a link, between BPH and impotence...ie an
overactive sympathetic nervous supply to prostate and cavernosal (penile)
tissue. Although you seem to be not representative, several trials have
shown that two alpha-blockers (Hytrin and Cardura) may have a positive
effect on sexual dysfunction ie if you are impotent they can improve
function (not to the same extent as Viagra, however). The odd one out here
is Flomax which can increase sexual dysfunction in up to 18% of patients
studied.
