Proceedings of the 19(th) Annual Fall Scientific Meeting of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, New Orleans, USA, November 21-24 2013.

摘要

Introduction: Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a common complication of radical prostatectomy. Pioglitazone (PIO) is a thiazolinedione utilized in treatment of diabetes mellitus. Given its known vasculoprotective and antifibrotic properties, we evaluated pioglitazone in a rat nerve-crush model of ED.Materials and Methods: 15 Sprague-Dawley rats were stratified: 1-sham, 2-nerve crush (NC), 3-PIO treatment. Sham rats underwent an abdominal incision. Groups 2 and 3 underwent bilateral cavernosal NC. All rats subsequently underwent oral gavage for 14 days (sham and NC with phosphate buffered saline (PBS), PIO treatment with PIO 0.65 mg/kg). Following a 1-day washout period, all rats underwent cavernosal nerve stimulation at 2.5, 5.0, and 7.5 V Intracavernosal pressure to mean-arterial pressure (ICP/MAP) was assessed. Statistics were performed using Student's t-test, with p < 0.05 as significant. Results: Significant decreases in ICP/MAP were noted with NC rats compared to sham animals at all voltages. PIO-treated animals had significantly increased ICP/MAP values compared to NC controls (PIO vs NC: 2.5 V - 0.47 + 0.07 vs 0.25 ±0.05 p = 0.0422; 5 V: 0.57 ± 0.05 vs 0.35 ± 0.07 p = 0.0343; 7.5 V: 0.62 ± 0.05 vs 0.42 ± 0.05, p = 0.0229. Conclusion: PIO administration improves erectile function in a rat model of post-prostatectomy ED. Further evaluation is required to identify potential mechanisms of action and assess clinical utility.