Diabetic Sexual Dysfunction

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Male sexual dysfunction may be classified as follows: diminished libido; dysfunction of emission, ejaculation, or orgasm; erectile dysfunction; and priapism.42,h5 The most common of the various sexual dysfunctions is erectile dysfunction or i m p ~t e n c e .~~ Numerous advances have been made in understanding the physiologic and biochemical mechanisms controlling penile erection.In addition, improved clinical techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of erectile dysfunction have been developed.Erectile dysfunction is the consistent inability to attain and maintain a penile erection sufficient to permit satisfactory sexual intercourse."4In 1948 Kinsey and associates estimated by epidemiologic data that 10 million American males, or approximately 1 in 10 men, had erectile dysfunction.h3In 1994 Goldstein and associates reported on the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, an epidemiologic investigation which looked at the medical and psychosocial correlates of erectile d y s f u n c t i ~n .~~ This large, random, community-based study suggested that the prevalence of impotence from ages 40 to 70 years is more than 50%.Contemporary studies indicate, therefore, that impotence affects more than 20 million American men.Certain groups of patients have been found to have a particularly high prevalence of erectile dysfunction.In the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, aging, hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes were among several physiologic variables found to predict impotence strongly.3ZMen with treated diabetes had more than three times the probability of having impotence than men without diabetes.Other studies have similarly demonstrated that men with diabetes mellitus have a significantly higher prevalence of erectile dysfunction than the general population, ranging from 35% to 75%.25, 105, l I 5 Impotence has been found to be an age-dependent disorder that is accelerated in the diabetic man.32,3R, 63, 78 The prevalence of erectile dysfunction in diabetic men is 15% at 69,