UPDATE - Issue 04 - November 1999
Prostatitis
An inflammatory disease which can occur at any time in a man's life
Prostatitis, simply means an inflammation of the prostate. It can affect young men, while BPH and prostate cancer are more typical of older men, although not exclusively so. Because prostatitis varies in severity and because it has attracted little attention from researchers, there are no statistics of how many suffer from it.
It occurs in at least two forms of which acute bacterial prostatitis is the most common. This variant develops quickly, can cause intense pain, fever, and chills and may even require hospitalisation, but usually responds rapidly to antibiotics.
Chronic bacterial prostatitis is less intense, but is not cured quickly by antibiotics alone. Sometimes the condition will become dormant for a while and then return immune to the original antibiotic.
The Symptoms
There are a variety of symptoms and problems associated with prostatitis, which may be continual or may come and go. Many can be caused by other diseases so it is important to consult a doctor.
Look out for:
Urinary problems: Caused by the swollen prostate partially blocking the urethra.
Pain/ache/discomfort: As well as the pain caused by the swollen prostate, itself, there may also be pain some distance from the prostate.
Sexual problems: Besides the obvious problem that it is hard to enjoy sex when ejaculation (or arousal) causes pain it may become difficult to maintain an erection.
Fertility problems: Sperm count and mobility can be seriously reduced by prostatitis.
Chills and fever: Fever should be treated as an emergency and professional help sought immediately.
The Causes of Prostatitis
There are many theories about the causes of prostatitis. The most popular theory among the members of the web based news group we consulted is that the infection is caused by common bacteria and fungi acquired in a variety of ways: Sex, poor hygiene, contamination during an operation, swimming in polluted water, for example. The prostate has some 20-50 smaller fluid producing glands called acini. When an infective agent enters one of these glands, it quickly becomes blocked. Once blocked, it begins to swell as fluid accumulates.
Other theories of how prostatitis is caused include one, based on the discovery that only housebroken dogs get prostatitis, that holding the urine damages the prostate in some way. Another, based on the fact that certain middle European countries where the diet is high in zinc have much lower levels of prostatitis, is that a zinc deficiency reduces the prostate's ability to resist an infection.
A fourth theory, based on the fact that prostatitis was once known as the monk's disease, is that a sudden reduction in the average number of ejaculations per time period is a triggering event.
The real cause of prostatitis may be some mixture of all of the above and may vary for each patient. The one thing we can be sure of is that it is definitely not . . . all in the patient's head.