FRIDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Statins might quickly help reverse erectile dysfunction among men who have metabolic syndrome, new animal research suggests.

A threat to cardiovascular health, metabolic syndrome is also known to raise the risk for erectile dysfunction (ED). The current finding indicates that statins may reduce levels of a specific protein that contributes to ED.

"Each condition of metabolic syndrome phenomenon -- high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and obesity -- independently raises the risk for erectile dysfunction just on their own," explained study author Christopher J. Wingard, an associate professor of physiology with the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. "And so, when all are present in combination as part of this syndrome, you have a situation where you don't even need to be as diabetic or hypertensive as you might otherwise have to be to experience erectile dysfunction. And that fact has been raising concern among clinicians."

"So, we followed up on case reports and anecdotal evidence that statins being used to lower cholesterol over a six- to eight-week period among patients with metabolic syndrome seemed to also quickly improve erections -- even before cholesterol levels go down," Wingard added. "And in an animal model, we found this to be the case."

Wingard and his colleagues presented their findings recently at the American Urological Association Research Conference, in Linthicum, Md.

The effort to evaluate the possibility of using statins to treat ED focused on 16- to 20-week-old lean and obese rats, all of whom were given one of three statins on a daily basis for between three to five days.

The researchers then assessed erectile function in the rats. At the same time, they also measured any changes in levels of certain key proteins that they believed could be involved in triggering the onset of ED.

The authors found that the statins were able to quickly relieve some of the vascular constriction associated with metabolic syndrome that can bring about ED.

They further noted that the way in which the statins appeared to have their effect was by inhibiting the expression -- and lowering the levels -- of a particular protein known as Rho-kinase. This protein had previously been cited as a possible culprit in vascular constriction of penile smooth muscle.

Wingard suggested that more research is sure to follow, to explore whether the findings would apply to patients following a long-term regimen of statin treatment.

However, Dr. Arnold Melman, chairman of the department of urology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, described the findings as "very preliminary."

"Statins are used by everyone under the sun, and, as far as I know, there's been no hard evidence that it can be used to treat erectile dysfunction," he said. "On the other hand, it may be that it could prevent or modify some of the other risk factors for erectile dysfunction."

"This is because we do know that an increase in Rho-kinase leads to heightened tone of the corpus smooth muscle, which is one of the causes of erectile dysfunction," Melman noted. "So, while I wouldn't go too far with this, and I would probably not see statins becoming a primary treatment for erectile dysfunction, if these findings turn out to be true, then there could perhaps be an additional good use for statins."

More information

For more on erectile dysfunction, visit the American Academy of Family Physicians  .

TUESDAY, Aug. 12 (HealthDay News) -- The latest update from a European study that has followed men with prostate cancer for more than a decade leaves the debate about the advantages of aggressive treatment versus "watchful waiting" undecided.

The advantage in survival seen for men who underwent surgery to remove the prostate disappeared after 10 years. While deaths attributed to cancer continued to be lower among those having surgery, the overall death rate for both groups was the same, according to the researchers with the Scandinavian Prostate Cancer Group.

The meaning of the study for men now being diagnosed with prostate cancer is uncertain, because the study began before the use of testing for prostate-specific antigen, today's primary method of diagnosis, the researchers added.

"In settings with a large proportion of PSA-detected tumors, the relative reduction in risk of death following radical prostatectomy [removal of the gland] might be somewhat larger or similar to that in our study, but the absolute reduction would be smaller," they wrote.

The findings were published online Aug. 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Yu-Ning Wong, an oncologist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said it's "unclear how these results apply to the patients we are taking care of today. They show how many questions remain unanswered."

Wong led a study that found an apparent benefit in survival for men who had aggressive surgical treatment of early prostate cancer. But it wasn't a randomized, controlled trial -- the gold standard for medical research.

"Basically, I don't think we know the right answer about what to do," she said.

Prostate cancer is diagnosed in about one of every six American men. There's currently no way to distinguish between a cancer that will grow so slowly that it poses little danger to life from one that can grow aggressively enough to be fatal. A common medical saying is that "more men die with their prostate cancer than of it."

Uncertainty about prostate cancer treatment has led to a new federal recommendation that men over 75 should not have PSA tests because the risks of treatment outweigh the benefits.

A final answer about whether surgery and other aggressive treatment is preferable to merely watching the course of the disease will not come for years, Wong said. A controlled trial is under way in Europe, and one is planned for the United States, she said.

Meanwhile, the decision about treatment versus watchful waiting must be made for each individual, Wong said.

"I have discussions with a patient about his other medical conditions, his age, his willingness to receive treatment that may have long-term side effects, weighed against the risk that he may develop an aggressive cancer," she said.

Stephen Zeliadt, a research scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said the new study "does provide evidence that intervention in the form of surgery does have a curative effect for some men. The question is, which men?"

Another question is whether the study results apply to "a screening population" of men who have PSA tests, Zeliadt said. "With screening, you catch a lot of different types of cancer, and also at different ages. There is no information in the study on the age of detection."

So, Zeliadt added, this study doesn't help solve the prostate cancer riddle. "It probably makes it even more confusing," he said.

Dr. Peter T. Scardino, chairman of the department of surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said the study did offer an important finding: "The big benefit of treating potentially lethal prostate cancer comes early, in the first five to 10 years."

The study also "showed lots of benefits of surgery but did not find any benefit from surgery for men over the age of 65," he noted.

More information

To learn more about prostate cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

THURSDAY, Aug. 7 (HealthDay News) -- American men ages 18 to 44 are more than twice as likely as women in the same age group to have adopted a child, a new federal report says.

The report uses data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, which showed that more than 1.2 million men and 613,000 women had adopted children. The exact reasons why more men adopt than women aren't outlined in the report, but it may be partly due to men getting married and adopting their spouse's children from a previous relationship, the report said.

The report found that:

• Among people who've ever been married, men were more than 2.5 times as likely as women to have adopted -- 3.8 percent vs. 1.4 percent. Overall, 2.3 percent of all men had adopted a child.
• More than one in four women ages 40 to 44 who had ever used infertility services had adopted a child.
• Never-married adults ages 18 to 44 were significantly less likely to have adopted a child compared to those who were currently married. About 100,000 never-married women and 73,000 never-married men had adopted a child.
• Compared with non-Hispanic white women, Hispanic and non-Hispanic black women were more likely to be currently seeking to adopt a child.

The report was released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center on Health Statistics.

More information

The U.S. Children's Bureau has more about adoption.