Is urethritis related to sexual life?

Urethritis is a very common urinary system disease. Patients with urethritis will have difficulty or pain when urinating, which will cause a lot of trouble to the patient's basic life. Moreover, patients with urethritis will experience greater pressure during sexual intercourse, and the pain may even be more obvious. So, is there any relationship between urethritis and sexual life?

1. Orchitis

Orchitis is quite rare, and there are three routes of infection: hematogenous, lymphatic and direct spread. Any infection of the bloodstream can cause acute inflammation of the testicles. Among them, mumps orchitis is the most common, which can be caused by descending infection because the mumps virus is excreted from the patient's urine. About 20% of patients with mumps after puberty have orchitis, and about a quarter of them have bilateral orchitis. The main symptoms of orchitis are: testicular swelling, pain, fever, and sometimes chills. When men suffer from acute orchitis, they may experience difficulty in sexual intercourse because the vascular congestion caused by excitement can cause pain in the inflamed testicles. The pressure generated during sexual intercourse, as well as the rotation and elevation of the testicles can also cause pain.

Recently, it has been found that during acute orchitis, the function of the Leydig cells (i.e., interstitial cells) of the testicles is impaired, and some patients may continue to have abnormal testosterone secretion; in some patients, sperm production may be temporarily affected. About half of patients who have experienced mumps orchitis develop testicular atrophy, but testosterone production is generally not impaired.

2. Urethritis and cystitis

Almost all sources of infection can cause lower urinary tract infection, but bacterial infection is the most common. Urethritis is usually divided into two categories: gonococcal and non-gonococcal. During routine examination and bacterial culture, no pathogen is found in about 90% of non-gonococcal urethritis, so this type of infection is called "nonspecific urethritis." If specific methods are used for examination, trachoma iatroplasma can be isolated from 42% of non-gonococcal male urethra. In addition, Trichomonas and Candida are also common pathogens of "non-gonococcal urethritis".

Typical urethritis often presents with dysuria (pain or burning sensation during urination) and frequent and urgent urination. Gonococcal urethritis usually presents with persistent urination, whereas nongonococcal urethritis does not have this symptom. If you have cystitis (often accompanied by urethritis), you will experience significant suprapubic pain and tenderness.

Urethritis and cystitis can be caused by sexual intercourse, or by prostate hypertrophy or chronic prostatitis. However, many patients do not have urinary tract symptoms (including dribbling urination), and some patients often deny these symptoms in front of their doctors due to fear and guilt. If these patients are not diagnosed and treated in time, their spouses will be at increased risk of infection; some patients may also temporarily stop having sex to cover up their illness.

Unless the urethral mucosa is extensively affected, urethritis generally does not affect sexual life. Despite this, some patients still experience sexual dysfunction due to psychological reasons. The incidence of urethritis after sexual intercourse in male patients with hypospadias is significantly higher than that in those with normal urethra, which may be because bacteria invade the urethral opening from the vagina during sexual intercourse. The incidence of various urethritis in the homosexual population is higher than that in the general population.