The objective of this study consisted in assessing the prevalence of erectile dysfunction (ED) and other sexual dysfunctions in a group of men who attended a prostate awareness week campaign. In total, 2715 men attended to 'Semana de la Prostata 2001' campaign and received an additional questionnaire on sexual health. The prevalence of ED, desire and ejaculatory disorders was of 41.7, 33.8 and 49.3%, respectively; however, not all of them lived these difficulties as a real sexual problem because only 918 men (37.8%) acknowledged having 'any sexual difficulty'. Only 13.7% of the attendees consulted a physician for this reason in the past. This first Argentinean study proves the high prevalence of sexual dysfunctions in our population.

Bladder papillomatosis offers a good target to evaluate IFN-alpha systemic treatment. We carried out a pilot study on eight multiple bladder papilloma patients under the same treatment scheme (1 x 10(6) IU/amp. every 48 h over six months), and they were followed-up for over two years after treatment. Recurrent patients underwent a similar second treatment. IFN-alpha therapy showed the following variations of effects: total disappearance, size decrease or persistence of papillomas, neither size increase nor appearance of new ones, remarkable valuable recurrence frequency rate decrease in all cases, and recurrences with smaller papillomas. This IFN-alpha treatment scheme would be fit to carry out broader controlled studies to show frequencies of the different kinds of responses. The inclusion of a minimum (dose-frequency-period) IFN-alpha treatment period after the first six months' therapy is proposed in order to achieve total disappearance of recurrences.

With a technique adapted for needle biopsies from human prostate, androgen receptors have been quantitated in normal, hyperplastic, and carcinomatous samples. An important improvement in the yield of cytosol specific binding sites was obtained when samples were pre-incubated with the mercurial reagent mersalyl, which dissociates endogenously bound hormone receptor complexes, before the binding assay with 3H-methyltrienolone (3H-R1881). Androgen receptors in normal prostate tissue were found to be highest (7.81 +/- 1.12 pmoles/g tissue), and significantly different from hyperplastic prostate (2.02 +/- 0.55 pmoles/g tissue, p less than 0.025), but not from carcinomatous samples (4.47 +/- 0.79 pmoles/g tissue). Mean values for hyperplastic and carcinoma were not statistically distinguishable (p less than 0.1). The clinical response to hormone therapy in 85% of 13 patients with prostatic adenocarcinoma reflected the prostatic androgen receptor content. Orchidectomy followed by estrogen administration for several months leads to a dramatic fall (8-fold) in total androgen receptors in carcinomatous prostate, while estrogen alone did not seem to produce a significant effect. These preliminary data suggest that androgen could directly regulate its binding sites, as demonstrated earlier for other animal target organs.