Erectile dysfunction and alcohol intake

The objective of this work is to evaluate in a selection of patients with erectile dysfunction the influence of alcohol consumption and the response to alcohol abstinence with and without sildenafil association. Materials and Methods. In a population of 150 consecutive patients with erectile dysfunction we studied 50 patients aged between 22 and 77 years (mean 56±14 SD). These 50 patients were divided into three different treatment groups and were screened for three different levels of alcohol risk with two questionnaires. All patients were evaluated with an International Index Erectile Dysfunction (IIEF) questionnaire before and after one month of treatment. RESULTS. The 50 patients included 14 patients with high alcohol risk, 34 patients with low alcohol risk and only 2 patients with no alcohol risk. After one month, 29 patients responded to the therapy, and 21 did not respond. The IIEF questionnaire presented a statistically significant difference between the different risk groups before and after treatment (p≤0.05). All the patients were examined with a penile Doppler Ultrasound. Only 10 of them had an abnormal diastolic peak velocity (PDV) and only 1 presented both pathologic systolic peak velocity (PSV) and PDV. These 11 patients did not respond to therapies and 10 of them were at high alcohol risk. The alcohol consumption risk was directly correlated with PDV (p=0.00001; R2=0.4). CONCLUSIONS. The results of this study demonstrated a significant relationship between alcohol consumption and erectile dysfunction. This underlines the important therapeutic issue of alcohol abstinence in treating patients with erectile dysfunction.