Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome in adolescents compared with that in young adults

Chronic prostatitis (CP)/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS) has been studied mainly in adults; reports in adolescents are rare. We compared the clinical characteristics of adolescent CP/CPPS patients with those of young adults.

We retrospectively analyzed 20 adolescents with CP/CPPS aged <20 years who visited our outpatient department from August 2005 to April 2012. The control group comprised 120 young adult CP/CPPS patients. A complete medical history, physical examination, the national institute of health-chronic prostatitis symptoms index (NIH-CPSI) questionnaire, urinalysis, expressed prostatic secretion (EPS) or semen analysis, transrectal prostate ultrasonography, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) were performed. Based on the EPS or semen analysis, patients were divided into category III-A or III-B.

The mean age was 16.5±2.0 and 32.8±5.0 years in the adolescent and control groups, respectively. A sexual activity history was seen in 2 patients; 9 and 11 patients were in category III-A and III-B, respectively. The PSA was 0.65±0.39 and 1.22±0.48 ng/mL in the adolescent and control groups, respectively. The prostate size was 12.4±4.4 and 21.0±4.9 g in the adolescent and control groups, respectively. The NIH-CPSI scores in the adolescent group were 9.2±5.2, 5.5±3.5, 7.5±3.2, and 22.2±8.1 for pain, voiding, quality of life (QoL) domains, and total scores, respectively. The adolescent group showed a tendency to exhibit high voiding symptom scores.

CPPS has an equally severe impact on QoL in adults and adolescents. Apart from high voiding symptom scores in adolescents, no difference was found in terms of urologic clinical parameters.