Juraj Fillo, Michaela Levčíková, Ján Luha, Ján Breza, Anna Vachulová, Štefan Durdík, Peter Labaš, Martina Ondrušová
Objective: Male sex hormones play an important role not only in the erectile dysfunction (ED) and testosterone deficiency
syndrome (TDS), but they also might affect the development of the metabolic syndrome (MetS). The number of
men with abdominal obesity (AO), which presents serious health risk, is continually growing. The aim of the presented
study was to determine the occurrence of AO in a cohort of healthy men, who underwent preventive urological examination
and to relate the findings to the presence/ non- presence of ED, lowered levels of testosterone (TST) and MetS.
Material and Methods: The total number of males in this cross-sectional descriptive study was 216. 91.7 % of them presented
with AO. All men, regardless of the AO presence, underwent complete urological, internal and hormonal examination.
Men with detected AO were further divided based on the degree of its severity. The ED incidence, TDS/lowered
TST and MetS levels were compared in these sub-groups and in patients without AO.
Results: ED was found to be significantly more common among men with AO in comparison with men without AO,
and its incidence had an increasing trend with the degree of AO severity. Significantly lower TST levels are recorded
in patients in particular sub groups of the AO seriousness, compared with patients without AO. When assessing MetS
incidence, it was found that MetS is not detected in patients without AO; on the contrary, patients with increasing degrees
of AO severity have also an increasing trend of MetS incidence.
Conclusion: Men aged > 40 years with AO have a higher incidence of ED, TDS, and MetS and, therefore, these examinations
should be performed in each patient with detected AO.