Premature ejaculation (PE) can be defined as a lack in the normal voluntary control over ejaculation and surely is the most common male sexual disorder. 1 It has been traditionally considered a psychological defect, but in recent years many organic causes have been found, 2 identified locally in the penis and in the central or peripheral nervous system. Consequently, a pharmacological way of relieving it has been researched 3 and some drugs, as fluoxetine, paroxetine, clomipramine, etc. have been used with various results. 4 We wish now to communicate the beneficial effects of another drug, levosulpiride, an anti-dopaminergic drug which is commonly used in some dyspeptic syndromes in anxious patients and to treat some types of hemicrania. We observed its effect on premature ejaculation accidentally, after prescribing the drug for its usual purpose to three patients. It was only by chance that all of them were suffering from premature ejaculation. During the following visit, after 20 -30 days, we were surprised to hear of a wonderful improvement in their sexual life. This observation led us to set up an appropriate double-blind study. Forty-nine patients were chosen, who had been suffering from PE for at least the past 5 years. After having obtained informed consent, we carefully examined their medical histories, in order to avoid epileptic subjects and any kind of psychiatric pathology. Patients suffering from erectile disorders were not included in the study. We did not research the patients' ejaculatory latency times, because we did not intend to discriminate among different types of ejaculatory pathologies, we only wished to test the improving capacity of the drug. The patients' ages ranged between 29 and 55 y, with a mean of 41.4. Fifteen subjects were chosen adequately, in order to maintain a comparable mean age with the other group and were treated with placebo only. The remaining 34 received 25 mg of the drug once a day for 60 days. They were taught to record their latency times with a stop-watch and to report any incidental side effect. In every patient an assay for prolactin was performed before starting the trial, as the hyperprolactinemic effect of the drug in many subjects is well known and we wanted to evaluate the size of it in everyone and the possible relationship with the therapeutic effect of the drug. 5 After 60 days the patients were followed-up. None of the patients were lost to follow-up. After collecting the results, the patients who had received the drug were divided in four groups, depending on the improvement rate they referred: A, B, C, D. In group A we put the subjects with a very good improvement, that was an improvement of more than 500% in the latency time (generally, these patients could last longer than 5 min, but we took care of the improvement rate only). Surprisingly, we had to note that this was the largest group, since 18 subjects were in it (52.94%). In the second group (B) we put the subjects who had some improvement, even though the latency time they achieved could not be...
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