About the episode
About half of men between the ages of 40 and 70 sometimes or regularly suffer from erectile dysfunction. About 5 percent suffer from Peyronie’s disease after a penile injury, which can be very painful and in which scar tissue makes it difficult for the penis to function.
Some studies look at how the patient’s own tissue can be repaired in such a case. For example, by using tissue from elsewhere in the body where the damage is. But according to Chinese researchers, this doesn’t work too often, so they came up with another idea: artificial tissue.
They developed something similar to the tissue in the penis that plays a role in getting an erection that shouldn’t be dangerous to place in the body between other tissues. Now comes the number one caveat to this study: they then started testing it in pigs.
It is stated there: in pigs with damaged tissue in their penis, but as you will understand that almost always means that the animals have not sustained that damage themselves. That makes discussing these types of studies difficult. Is being able to get an erection independently thanks to inventions like this worth the suffering of these pigs? I would say no. Then just wait until it can be tested in another way.
But it did work. An erection was possible again with the implanted tissue. At least: with these pigs. Was the entire penis restored? No. Which is also side note number two. Often, multiple types of tissue are damaged in these types of injuries. And despite the fact that the artificial tissue was still doing its job after a month and was not being shed, the surrounding tissue did not recover.
They want to change that in follow-up research. They also think that it should also be able to work in other places in the body, in case of other damage. As far as I’m concerned, they can then conduct those studies on themselves, and we’ll know even faster whether it really works for people.
Lees meer: An artificial tissue restores erectile function in pigs.