Clinical value of serum 5-HT level in diagnosis and treatment of premature ejaculation.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate serum 5-HT level in premature ejaculation (PE) patients and evaluate its clinical value in diagnosis and treatment of PE.

METHODS

71 patients were recruited in this study. Their serums were collected before and after sertraline treatment, while serums from 64 normal males were also collected as a control. Serum 5-HT level was detected by ELISA. SPSS 17.0 software was used to analyze the level of serum 5-HT and the ROC curve was drawn.

RESULTS

The average serum 5-HT level of PE patients was 61.9 ng/ml in our study, which was significantly lower than that of the control group (120.6 ng/ml), with statistical significance (p < 0.01). After sertraline treatment, the average serum 5-HT level in PE patients was 98.9 ng/ml, which was significantly higher than that before sertraline treatment. Sensitivity and specificity for serum 5-HT as a predictive diagnostic tool for PE were 92.2 and 93.0%, respectively, and the cutoff value of serum 5-HT was 86.4 ng/ml.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study showed that serum 5-HT level may be used as a functional diagnostic tool for PE and an indicator in PE treatment.