Why do men have sudden erections?
Explaining doctor/@Dr Karan
A patient from West Africa exhibited a side effect of an erection that lasts for many hours, when in fact it turned out that the cause was a virus that was not connected to the phenomenon at all.
Now experts claim that this disease may indeed cause spontaneous erection as one of its side effects.
The disease is dengue fever and it is the most common disease in the world that is transmitted by mosquito bites.
According to estimates, every year around 100 million people around the world become infected with the virus.
Doctors in West Africa report that the mosquito-borne virus — often associated with a rash of skin rashes, vomiting and internal bleeding — can also cause spontaneous erections that can last for hours, based on the story of a 17-year-old patient from Burkina Faso who demonstrated the embarrassing side effect to doctors, as published in Urology Case Reports.
According to the study, the boy was hospitalized with kidney damage and acute ischemia - the suppression of blood flow to a certain area - resulting from his condition.
The doctors noticed that he had a "soft" erection that developed spontaneously without any sexual stimulation - lasting 18 hours straight.
The case marked the first time this relationship was documented in the literature.
The Asian tiger mosquito that spreads dengue fever/ShutterStock
The experts attributed the symptom - known as arterial priapism - to the virus, which infected blood vessels in the penis.
This caused plasma to leak into the member, making his penis appear larger even in a flaccid state.
Fortunately, doctors were able to treat the patient with an ice pack, which caused the blood vessels to constrict and helped the organ return to its normal size within 48 hours.
The primary viral infection was treated concurrently with antiviral drugs.
At the follow-up appointments three and six months later, the doctors noticed that the boy was healthy and able to achieve a normal erection without any problem.
Although this symptom may seem like a one-time extreme case, experts believe that dengue can indeed trigger priapism (prolonged erection).
"Viruses have been linked to priapism in the past including Covid, mumps and even rabies," Dr Richard Murphy, who has advised Doctors Without Borders in Africa for seven years, told the DailyMail, "so other viruses may be linked." Indeed, in 2021 A coronavirus patient in the US experienced an erection that lasted three hours, which doctors believed was caused by a coronavirus-induced blood clot in his penis.
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The experts attributed the symptom - known as arterial priapism - to the virus/ShutterStock
What is dengue fever?
Dengue fever exists in all developing countries.
The widespread distribution of the disease is due to the wide distribution of the mosquitoes that transmit it: these are mosquitoes from the Aedes family, to which the Asian tiger mosquito (also called striped Aedes) also belongs.
These mosquitoes breed in both natural and artificial water bodies: puddles, flooded areas, stagnant water in pots and rubber tires and even in an innocent vase where the water has been standing for a long time.
These mosquitoes are active (biting) mainly during the day.
The dengue virus is transmitted to a person during a "blood meal" of an infected mosquito that bit him.
The virus reaches the stung person's bloodstream and multiplies in it for about a week.
An uninfected mosquito becomes infected after biting an infected person.
Therefore, two conditions are necessary for dengue to spread: the presence of the mosquitoes that spread the disease and the presence of infected humans.
There is no possibility of direct infection between humans or between humans and animals without the mediation of the appropriate mosquitoes.
Dengue fever has a wide spectrum of possible symptoms: starting from an asymptomatic disease (only about a quarter of those infected have any symptoms) and ending with a life-threatening disease.
The classic symptomatic disease usually manifests itself in about 4-7 days of incubation following a bite that is usually not remembered nor felt.
The symptoms are non-specific and include fever, severe weakness, headache, pain in the eye sockets, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.
Other symptoms are redness in the conjunctiva of the eyes and severe pain in the back, muscles and joints.
A rash often appears all over the body.
The average duration of the disease is about 6 days and another heat wave is possible before recovery (this is a two-stage disease).
The disease passes on its own without complications and without specific treatment, but exhaustion and weakness may occur after recovery.
All dengue cases diagnosed in Israel were among returning travelers.
Although the Asian tiger mosquito, which is one of the carriers of the virus, is found in Israel, there is currently no mass of sick or infected people that allows the formation of a continuous cycle of infection.
As a result, there have been no local outbreaks of dengue fever so far.
According to a report by the World Health Organization from 2023, the rate of dengue patients is skyrocketing worldwide with "reported cases since 2000 increasing eightfold to 4.2 million in 2022".
More about the spread of dengue fever, its prevention and vaccination >>
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Dengue fever
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