Abstract

"Traditional approach to manage chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) has not been successful for many patients. There is no one unifying etiological mechanism or specific curative therapy for CP/CPPS. However, each of the proposed mechanisms may be important in some patients, and many of the treatments work in subgroups of patients. So, CP/CPPS patients are not a homogenous group, which suffers from a single disease entity, but rather a heterogeneous group of individual patients with widely different clinical phenotypes. Unique individuals with differing clinical phenotypes based on various etiological mechanisms with distinctive symptom complexes. A clinically practical phenotyping classification system for patients diagnosed with CP/CPPS has recently been proposed and validated in a CP/CPPS cohort. UPOINT is a 6-point clinical classification system that categorizes the phenotype of patients with CP/CPPS into one or more of 6 clinically identifiable domains: urinary, psychosocial, organ specific, infection, neurologic/systemic, and tenderness (muscle). It is proposed that patients be classified into one or more of these phenotypic domains, as a way to characterize them and direct specific therapy. There is a suggestion that phenotypically directed therapy will improve our clinical treatment outcomes."

• Keywords: Chronic prostatitis with chronic pelvic pain syndrome, Phenotype