Hyperthyroid men may be at greater risk of erectile dysfunction: Study

The meta-analysis of four studies comprising data from more than 25,000 men can inform discussions between physicians and patients with hyperthyroidism concerning the choice of therapy for erectile dysfunction.

There has been no clarity on the relationship between hyperthyroidism and ED; knowledge about the relationship is essential for making informed therapeutic and diagnostic choices. There is a need for further studies to determine if low levels of TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone), T3, and T4 are risk factors for erectile dysfunction and, if so, whether this would contraindicate the use of antithyroid drugs.

To address this knowledge gap, Xiaowen Liu, Changsha Hospital for Maternal and Child Health Care of Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China, and colleagues aimed to evaluate the association between hyperthyroidism and the risk of erectile dysfunction.

For this purpose, the researchers searched the online databases for all studies evaluating men with hyperthyroidism who had erectile dysfunction. The quality of studies for meta-analysis was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Rating Scale, and RevMan 5.3, Stata 16.0 software was used for meta-analysis.

The meta-analysis included four papers with 25519 study subjects, of which the number of patients suffering from hyperthyroidism was 6429, and the number of controls was 19090; 99% of the study subjects were from one study in China.

The investigation led to the following results:

• The overall prevalence of ED in patients with comorbid hyperthyroidism was 31.1%.
• The overall prevalence of ED in patients with combined uncomplicated hyperthyroidism was 21.9%.
• The odds ratio for having ED was significantly higher in men with hyperthyroidism compared with those without hyperthyroidism in the study from China, at 1.74, and also in the meta-analysis, which produced a significant odds ratio of 1.73. But the odds ratios in the other three studies included in the analysis were insignificant.

The limitation was that the meta-analysis included just four studies because of the few studies on this topic that have appeared in the medical literature.

"Our findings demonstrate that patients with hyperthyroidism had more incidence of ED," the researchers wrote.

"The knowledge of the relationship between ED and hyperthyroidism is paramount for diagnostic and therapeutic choices, both for clinical male infertility specialists and for haematologists," they concluded.

Reference:

Xiaowen Liu, Yanling Wang, Li Ma et al. High Prevalence of Erectile Dysfunction in Men With Hyperthyroidism: a meta-analysis, 06 April 2023, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2550212/v1]