Introduction: While erectile dysfunction (ED) and cardiovascular disease have long been known to share endothelial dysfunction as a common contributory underlying mechanism, little research has been conducted taking endothelial dysfunction as common ground to investigate the potential association between ED and gastric ulcers (GUs).
Aim: This population-based case-control study aimed to investigate the association of ED with GU.
Methods: This study used data from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000 in Taiwan. The study group comprised 6,906 patients who visited ambulatory care centers or were hospitalized with a diagnosis of ED. The comparison group was 20,718 randomly selected enrollees. Conditional logistic regression was used to examine associations between ED and prior GU.
Main outcome measure: The prevalence and risk between cases and controls were calculated of having been previously diagnosed with GU.
Results: Of the sampled subjects, 3,861 (14%) were diagnosed before the index date, 1,358 (19.7%) were cases, and 2,503 (12.1%) were controls (P<0.001). After adjusting for hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, renal disease, coronary heart disease, obesity, alcohol abuse/alcohol dependence syndrome, and socioeconomic status (SES), conditional logistic regression analysis revealed that cases were more likely to have been diagnosed with GU than controls (odds ratio [OR]=1.65, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.53-1.77). Stratification by age revealed that the youngest group (18-29) of ED patients had the most increased likelihood of having been previously diagnosed with GU when compared with matched controls (OR=4.12, 95% CI=2.41-7.03). The likelihood decreased with age, with the oldest group of ED patients having the least increased likelihood of prior GU when compared with matched controls (OR=1.44, 95%CI=1.23-1.68).
Conclusion: Our findings suggest a positive association between prior GU and a subsequent diagnosis with ED.
© 2012 International Society for Sexual Medicine.