A recent study showed that the
pattern for erectile dysfunction onset might have changed in the last few
years. A recent study, published in The
Journal of Sexual Medicine, has indeed found that one in four men seeking
help for a recent manifestation of erectile dysfunction is under 40 years old.
Paolo Capogrosso, from the University San Raffaele in Italy, has also found,
with the help of other researchers, that almost half of the young men with
erectile dysfunction (48.8%) had a severe form of the condition. The study
involved gathering socio-demographic data from a single outpatient clinic.
The gathered data also showed
that concomitant medical problems in young men were found only in 9.6% of the
cases, compared to the 41.7% cases for older men.
In the past, erectile dysfunction
at a relatively young age was thought to be due primarily to psychological
factors rather than vascular problems. This study highlights that a more
thorough medical inspection at the nature of young men’s erectile dysfunction
is needed. Performing more thorough analyses on young male patients with
erectile dysfunction can help doctors to pinpoint the causes leading up to the
condition. As Irwin Goldstein (editor of the Journal where the study was
published) underlines, understanding the specific factors that contribute to
the problem, would improve the patients’ overall health a few decades from now.
This study has only taken into
account results from a single outpatient clinic. Therefore, the reliability of
the results has to still be tested by further research on the matter. We await
more comprehensive data. You can find more information on the results and
statistics gathered in this study here.