The man suffered for 18 hours… The doctors had never seen this.
An “out of the ordinary” medical case. For the first time, doctors specializing in nephrology discovered the appearance of a new symptom in a 17-year-old adolescent, which occurred spontaneously after an infectious disease caused by bite of a tiger mosquito. For 5 days, the young man without medical historywas admitted to the nephrology department from the Ouagadougou University Hospital Center in Burkina Faso, a stay during which he suffered frompriapism of exceptional duration. “For approximately 18 hourshe presented a “soft”, non-painful and persistent erectionoccurring spontaneously without any sexual stimulation, without any notion of trauma or any triggering factor, motivating the healthcare team to take a urological opinion. they describe in review Urology Case Reports of March 2024. Thanks to an ice pack placed for 48 hours, the penis completely decreased in volume and the penis returned to normal, without after-effect. The patient was then monitored after 3 and 6 months: the corpora cavernosa (small reservoirs which fill with blood allowing erection) were flexible and the erections were now normal. “To our knowledge, no association of this type has been previously described in the literature.“, insist the researchers, who wish to deepen the link between dengue and priapism through additional studies.
A rare pathology
The infectious disease in question, dengue, is asymptomatic in 50 to 90% of cases. The severe form as presented by the young man occurs in 1 to 5% of symptomatic cases, depending on Public health France. This rare form is characterized by a sudden hemorrhagic fever that can increase vessel permeability. “These vascular and hemorrhagic leaks can, when they occur in the cavernous arteries, bypass the helicine arteries (those which allow erection, editor’s note) by passing directly from a cavernous artery with corpora cavernosa“, we learn in the report. This phenomenon disrupts arterial blood flowcausing priapism “High Speed”. This arterial priapism (which represents 5% of all priapisms) is a rare pathology which normally occurs after trauma to the perineum following a fall from a horse or following penis surgery to treat impotence.