Association between multiple sclerosis and erectile dysfunction: a nationwide case-control study.

BACKGROUND

Multiple sclerosis (MS) commonly affects young adults who may be sexually active, with sexual dysfunction being a significant, but often underestimated, symptom of MS. However, no large-scaled study has investigated the association between erectile dysfunction (ED) and MS in an Asian population to date.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study is to estimate the association between ED and a prior diagnosis of MS using a population-based dataset with a case-control design in Taiwan.

METHODS

The data were sourced from National Health Insurance Research Database. We identified 38,139 patients with ED as cases and randomly selected 262,848 subjects as controls. We then used conditional logistic regression to compute the odds ratio for having previously received a diagnosis of MS between cases and controls.

RESULTS

The prevalence of prior MS was 0.037% and 0.015% for cases and controls, respectively (P < 0.001). Conditional logistic regression analysis revealed that cases were 2.23 times (95% confidence interval = 1.15-4.32) more likely to have been previously diagnosed with MS than controls after adjusting for monthly income, geographic location, hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, obesity, and alcohol abuse/alcohol dependence syndromes.

CONCLUSIONS

This study revealed an association between ED and prior MS even after adjusting for potential confounders.