Sexual function in patients treated for benign prostatic hyperplasia

CONTEXT

What is the effect of different treatment options for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) on sexual function or dysfunction? With increasing age, sexual dysfunction and BPH become more prevalent. Some treatments for BPH can affect sexual function. Different surgical treatments have different effects on sexual function depending on how much the internal involuntary sphincter is affected. The same is true for medical therapies, each class of drug having a unique affect on sexual function.

STARTING POINT

In the past, many articles suggested a causal relation between BPH and sexual dysfunction. But a recent report by H Leliefeld and colleagues (BJU International 2002; 89: 208-13) confirms the idea that the relation is coincidental. Prospectively, these investigators examined patients at baseline and 9 months after various treatments for BPH with questionnaires on voiding symptoms, related complications, and sexual function. 84% of patients reported no change in sexual function. All treatments showed both improvement and deterioration in 3-14% and 0-16% of patients, respectively. As expected, age was the most important determinant of sexual function. In addition, the effect of severe irritative symptoms or the presence of urological comorbidity, such as bladder stones, increased the rate of sexual dysfunction. In this study, most patients underwent surgical therapy or watchful waiting while fewer had medical therapy. Too few patients had minimally invasive procedures to comment on their effect on sexual function. WHRE NEXT? Thus the relation between treatment of BPH (or watchful waiting) and sexual dysfunction is usually coincidental, unless symptoms become severe or complications (such as bladder stones or urinary retention) develop. More prospective studies are needed to assess the effect of BPH and its treatment on sexual function. Medical therapy is now more common than surgery in developed countries and treatment of BPH is commonly advocated for improvement in quality of life. Therefore any effects on sexual function become even more important. As minimally invasive surgical operations become more common, more data will be required for such interventions. The difficulty will be in keeping up with the rapidly evolving techniques of minimally invasive therapies.

Germline mutations and sequence variants of the macrophage scavenger receptor 1 gene are associated with prostate cancer risk

Deletions on human chromosome 8p22-23 in prostate cancer cells and linkage studies in families affected with hereditary prostate cancer (HPC) have implicated this region in the development of prostate cancer. The macrophage scavenger receptor 1 gene (MSR1, also known as SR-A) is located at 8p22 and functions in several processes proposed to be relevant to prostate carcinogenesis. Here we report the results of genetic analyses that indicate that mutations in MSR1 may be associated with risk of prostate cancer. Among families affected with HPC, we identified six rare missense mutations and one nonsense mutation in MSR1. A family-based linkage and association test indicated that these mutations co-segregate with prostate cancer (P = 0.0007). In addition, among men of European descent, MSR1 mutations were detected in 4.4% of individuals affected with non-HPC as compared with 0.8% of unaffected men (P = 0.009). Among African American men, these values were 12.5% and 1.8%, respectively (P = 0.01). These results show that MSR1 may be important in susceptibility to prostate cancer in men of both African American and European descent.

Intravesical suramin in the prevention of transitional cell carcinoma

OBJECTIVES

To examine the effects of intravesical suramin on N-methyl-N-nitrosurea (MNU)-induced bladder tumors in Fischer 344 rats.

METHODS

Multiple cohorts of female rats received four biweekly intravesical instillations of MNU. A control group received no other treatment, the experimental group received 25 mg/kg intravesical suramin twice a week beginning at week 6.

RESULTS

After 18 weeks from the first instillation of MNU, 60% to 65% of control animals developed papillary transitional cell carcinoma, compared with only 0% to 10% of the suramin-treated animals (P = 0.01 to P = 0.0007). There was no local or systemic toxicity observed.

CONCLUSIONS

Intravesical suramin is an effective chemopreventative therapy for transitional cell carcinoma in vivo with minimal toxicity.

Salvage radical prostatectomy: outcome measured by serum prostate specific antigen levels

We reviewed our experience with salvage radical prostatectomy for locally recurrent cancer in 40 patients to assess the current complication rate and the results using prostate specific antigen (PSA) as an indicator of treatment outcome and to identify better criteria for the selection of appropriate candidates for this operation. Most recurrent cancers were detected by digital rectal examination (26 patients) or increasing serum PSA levels (10). The operation was technically challenging, with 6 rectal injuries (15%), 2 requiring temporary colostomy. Serious technical complications were more common (31%) among the 29 patients who underwent pelvic lymphadenectomy at the time of initial radiotherapy than among the 11 treated with external irradiation alone (9%). Urinary incontinence persisted in 18 of 31 evaluable patients (58%) and was successfully corrected with an artificial urinary sphincter in 9. A total of 21 patients (54%) had pathologically advanced disease (seminal vesicle invasion and/or lymph node metastases). Preoperative PSA levels but not clinical stage or biopsy grade correlated with pathological stage (p < 0.03). If the PSA was less than 10 ng./ml. only 15% of the patients had an advanced pathological stage, compared to 86% if the PSA was 10 or more. After 2 to 97 months (mean 39) 2 patients died of metastatic prostatic cancer, 5 had distant metastases and none had symptomatic local recurrence. At 5 years the actuarial nonprogression rate measured by PSA was 55 +/- 20%. The only pretreatment factor predictive of progression was the serum PSA level. If the PSA was less than 10 ng./ml. the actuarial rate of progression was significantly lower than if the PSA was greater than 10 (p < 0.05). The best results were in the subset of 18 patients with cancer confined to the prostate or immediate periprostatic tissue: 82% had no progression at 5 years. Within each of these pathological stages the results of salvage prostatectomy were similar to those for standard radical prostatectomy in patients with no prior irradiation. Although technically challenging, salvage prostatectomy provides excellent control of radio-recurrent cancer confined to the prostate or immediate periprostatic tissue and is best performed before the preoperative PSA level increases to greater than 10 to 20 ng./ml.

Possible mechanism for seeding of tumor during radical prostatectomy

Prostatic adenocarcinoma sometimes recurs locally in the operative bed after radical prostatectomy. Having observed local recurrence in several patients who had a small tumor confined to the prostate on whole mount serial sections, we postulated that some instances of local recurrence could arise from malignant cells shed in prostatic secretions expressed during surgery. To evaluate whether prostatic secretions contain malignant cells and to estimate the frequency of this phenomenon, we collected fresh prostatic secretions from radical prostatectomy specimens immediately after removal. The secretions were analyzed by cytology for the presence of malignant cells. Of 76 samples collected from consecutive patients with clinical stages T1 and T2 prostate cancer at 3 institutions 11 (14%) contained malignant cells. Positive cytology results were most frequent in patients with poorly differentiated tumors. Of 11 cancers with a Gleason sum of 8 to 10 in the prostatectomy specimen 6 (55%) had a positive cytology result. However, of 63 tumors with a Gleason sum of 5 to 7 only 4 (6%) were positive (p < 0.0001). There was no significant correlation with either clinical or pathological stage of the tumor in this small series. Our findings suggest that malignant cells shed during prostatectomy may seed the surgical bed and could be responsible for some instances of local tumor recurrence. The rate of positive cytology results in our study is similar to the local recurrence rates reported in the literature. Surgeons should make prudent attempts to avoid seeding from this source.