Abstract

"Purpose: To measure changes in prostate cytokine secretion in chronic non-bacterial prostatitis (NBP) patients and examine the clinical usefulness of these changes in differentiating the pathophysiologic mechanism of NBP and subsequent selection of treatment modalities. Materials and Methods: Sixty male patients were diagnosed with chronic NBP, and a control group comprised of 30 male patients without clinical evidence of NBP were enrolled in this study. Prostate secretion (centrifuged VB3) was analyzed at the initialdiagnosis and 8 weeks after treatment initiation. Patients who showed more than 10 white blood cells (WBCs)/high power field (HPF) 8 weeks after treatment initiation were categorized into group A. Group B patients had less than 3 WBCs/HPF. Group B was further subclassified into two groups according to presence of symptoms after treatment: Bp (symptom-persisted) and Br (symptom-resolved). IL-1β, C3, C4, IgG were measured and the results were analyzed. Results: There were significant differences in the IL-1β level in the control group compared to group A, Bp and Br (p<0.05). C3, C4, IgG showed higher levels in groups A and B than in the control group, albeit without statistical significance (p>0.05). Conclusions: Elevated IL-1β in group Bp suggests that chronic NBP patients who did not respond to treatment could exhibitclinical manifestations of autoimmune reactions rather than infection of external origin. We suggest that a more advanced diagnostic technique using cytokine at the initial stage of disease manifestation tohelp clinicians avoid unnecessary antibiotic treatment and manage the condition more effectively."

• Keywords: Autoimmunity, Cytokines, Prostatitis