Seasonal fluctuation of erectile dysfunction: A cross‐sectional study from a tertiary university hospital across 10 years

Abstract

Erectile dysfunction (ED) shares several risk factors with diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension (HT) and coronary vascular disease (CVD), which were well-associated with seasonal fluctuation with the highest peak in winter. In this study, we aimed to determine whether ED demonstrates seasonal fluctuations with the above-mentioned systemic diseases. Database from a tertiary university hospital between 2010 and 2020 was deciphered to retrieve patients diagnosed with ED. Patients with primary bladder tumour and post-procedural ED constituted the negative control groups from the same study period. International index of erectile function questionnaire (IIEF-15) was used to segregate included patients into mild/moderate and severe ED groups. The probability of detecting DM, HT and CVD in patients with severe ED was significantly higher than that of with mild/moderate ED (p<0.05). More ED symptoms emerged and were diagnosed in the winter seasons even though no statistical significance was observed between patients with mild/moderate and severe ED (p=0.946, Cramer's V coefficient=0.19). The seasonal variation of patients with bladder tumour and post-procedural ED groups showed no significant difference (p>0.05, both). ED admissions are associated with higher peaks in the winter seasons. This may help in daily clinical practice to warrant better clinical and epidemiological interpretation of ED.