The New Age of Prostatitis.
Prostatitis has long been a poorly understood and poorly characterized entity. Characterized in 1980 as a "wastebasket of clinical ignorance," it has only recently begun to be studied effectively. Prostatitis represents over 2 million medical office visits per year in the United States, and is the diagnosis given to 8% of urology clinic patients. Its prevalence may be as high as 10% among the male population at large. Sufferers report a sickness impact of prostatitis that is similar to myocardial infarction or Crohn's disease. Less than 10% of cases of prostatitis are easily demonstrable to have a bacterial cause; these respond to conventional antimicrobial treatment. The etiology, pathogenesis, and optimum treatment for the remaining 90% of sufferers of this disease complex are quite unclear. Application of clinical research techniques and molecular biology promise new insight into this challenging and difficult problem.
Lloyd
Granville L.
GL
Northwestern University School of Medicine, Department of Urology, Tarry 11-713, 303 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611-3008, USA. ajschaeffer@nwu.edu
Schaeffer
Anthony J.
AJ