Comment: Sex, the final frontier
Paul Woolley
pp 3-3
I can’t say that I was too perturbed by a programme on the Discovery Channel that suggested the human race would need to have left our solar system before the sun went supernova … in about five million years’ time. However, it did remind me of the French astronomer Pierre Kohler’s claims that astronauts aboard a space shuttle flight in 1996 had had sex to provide clues as to how humans might survive for years in space.
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HIV-positive women and contraception: part 1
Laura Waters, Joel Myers and Leena Sathia
pp 4-6
In the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), HIV-infected individuals in developed countries have greatly reduced rates of morbidity and mortality. Worldwide, heterosexual transmission accounts for the majority of infections and in the UK the greatest number of new infections has been in heterosexual patients over recent years. In the USA, where sexual transmission between men who have sex with men is the main source of infection, the proportion of women with HIV increased from 15% prior to 1995 to 27% by 2004.
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Uterine transplantation: new hope for infertile women?
Eugene Kuzmin, Giuseppe Del Priore, Laszlo Ungar and J Richard Smith
pp 7-9
The year 1978 is remembered in the scientific community as the year when the first in vitro fertilisation (IVF) baby was born. Since then, new sophisticated treatment options, such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and ovarian cryopreservation have been implemented to treat infertility or restore fertility. Today, we are able to circumvent most of the major causes of infertility in both men and women. Owing to the possibilities offered by these assisted reproduction techniques, society has changed its fatalistic view of infertility from a condition that must be accepted to something which can be successfully treated.
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Optimising bone health in men with prostate cancer
Sanjay Rajpal and Stephen Brown
pp 10-12
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, accounting for nearly a quarter (24%) of all new cancer diagnoses. Advances in treatment options have extended the overall survival of men with the disease. This has, however, resulted in new challenges, including maintaining healthy bones, in the continuum of care of these patients. Patients with prostate cancer are at risk of skeletal complications from bone metastases and also bone loss following androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) used as a treatment for the disease. Increased awareness of this problem, as well as the implementation of a multidisciplinary approach, is needed to preserve the quality of life (QoL) of these patients.
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Sexual dysfunction in women: what are the options?
Margaret Rees
pp 13-15
Sexual problems in women are common. It has been estimated that they affect about one in two women and they become more common as women get older. Interest in sex declines in both sexes with increasing age, and this change is more pronounced in women. The term female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is now used. This review describes the classification of FSD and its aetiology, sex after hysterectomy, and non-hormonal and hormonal treatment options.
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Penile prostheses: surgical techniques and management
Giulio Garaffa, Amr Abdel Raheem, Antonino Saccá and David J Ralph
pp 16-18
In the 20th century, the advent of oral, intraurethral and intracavernosal agents has revolutionised the management of erectile dysfunction (ED). Consequently, most of the patients with ED, who in the past would have been candidates for penile prosthesis implantation, can be satisfactorily managed with medical treatment. However, when medical treatment fails to produce an adequate response, penile prosthesis implantation continues to be an excellent treatment modality for restoring erectile function.
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Mental mix-ups
David Hicks
pp 19-19
Having an interest in more than one subject contemporaneously, it is not uncommon for details to be muddled, such that two separate subjects become associated. I remember – and this was a long time ago – a patient coming to see me in the genitourinary clinic having read that one of the most famous inhabitants of London Zoo, Guy the Gorilla, had died. That same evening, the television news had also reported the emergence of a new ‘superbug’, beta-lactamase-producing gonococcus, and so the confused patient came to me asking whether he might have ‘gongorilla’!
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