Lower urinary tract symptoms among Caucasian-European men who have sex with men: findings from a real-life survey

Background:prevalence of and severity of lower urinary tract symptoms (luts) according to male sexual orientation have been scantly analysed. we aimed to assess the prevalence and severity of luts in a cohort of caucasian-european men who have sex with men seeking medical help for uroandrologic reasons other than luts.methods:data from 949 consecutive individuals in an outpatient setting were analysed. severity of luts was measured with the international prostate symptom score (ipss). men with storage symptoms scored 1–3 and ⩾4 (of 15), and voiding symptoms scored 1–4 and ⩾5 (of 20) were considered as having mild and moderate-to-severe symptoms, respectively. for individual symptoms, patients with scores ⩾1 were deemed symptomatic (according to apostolidis et al.15). descriptive statistics and logistic regression models tested the association between luts and sexual orientation.results:complete data were available for 213 (22.4%) men who have sex with men (msm) and 736 (77.6%) heterosexuals (mean age (s.d.): 41.0 (12.2) vs 39.9 (12.1) years). compared with heterosexuals, msm reported higher rates of total ipss scores suggestive of moderate (21.6% vs 20%) and severe luts (3.8% vs 2.4%) (p=0.004). similarly, msm showed higher rates of mild (48.8% vs 45.2%) and moderate-to-severe (39.4% vs 30.4%) storage symptoms (all p<0.001), and of mild (45.1% vs 34.8%) and moderate-to-severe (20.2% vs 19.2%) voiding symptoms (all p<0.01). msm status was an independent predictor of mild voiding symptoms (odds ratio (or): 1.40; p=0.004), moderate-to-severe storage symptoms (or: 1.40; p=0.04) and severe total ipss (or: 1.49; p=0.03), after adjusting for other variables.conclusions:these findings suggest a higher prevalence and severity of luts in msm compared with heterosexual men seeking medical help for uroandrologic reasons other than luts.