Signs, causes and risk factors of the peyronie's disease.

Signs and symptoms

Peyronie's disease can develop slowly or almost over night, and the signs and symptoms include:

• A bend or some degree of curvature in your erect penis

• Pain during erection

• Finding a thick band of hardened tissue on one or both sides of the penis

• An indented band or an hourglass shape forming in the penis during erection

• Failure to get an erection (also known as erectile dysfunction, or ED)

• Shortening of your penis

The pain of Peyronie’s disease can lessen over time however this does not mean that the disease is cured, as the curvature will persist. In milder cases of the disease, the inflammation might improve without causing permanent bending.

Depending on where the scar tissue forms in the penis, it will bend in the opposite direction. A plaque under the penis will cause it to bend up, on the left will cause it to bend to the right and so on. If the tissue develops on both sides, it will cause an hourglass shape to form.

Causes

Although doctors still do not understand all of the factors that cause Peyronie’s disease, there are a number of theories about what causes the condition:

• Injury to the penis. A knock to the penis can create tears in the tissue which in turn causes ruptures in the blood vessels within the organ and cause internal bleeding. These kind of injuries are sometimes caused by vigorous sex or an accident. The uneven or abnormal healing of the tissue within the penis can cause hard and thickened tissue to form. Over time, calcification and fibrosis can happen, and this will cause the deformity to arise.

• Autoimmune disorder. Some recent studies have concluded that Peyronie's disease could be an autoimmune disorder. If the immune system responds abnormally to an incident, a plaque may form in the penis and cause the deformity, however there does not appear to be a relationship between Peyronie's disease and other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.

• Inherited collagen abnormality. There is some evidence that abnormal genes that control the growth of collagen tissues within the body may be the cause of Peyronie's disease.

• Medications. There is a class of blood pressure and heart medications called beta blockers that may cause Peyronie's disease as a side effect. In general, these drugs are used in the treatment of seizures, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis. It is important to remember that these drugs are prescribed by doctors, and ceasing taking them can be dangerous.

Although there are a number of cases in which penile injury has caused the acute Peyronie's disease, it is in cases that happen more slowly without any immediate trauma to the penis that the explanation is harder to find.

Risk factors

Thankfully Peyronie's disease is fairly uncommon, although the following factors have been identified as increasing the risk:

• Age. Aging may diminish penile elasticity, increasing the chance of injury and the development of Peyronie's disease. Although it sometimes affects younger and older men, Peyronie's disease occurs most often in men ages 45 to 60.

• Heredity. People who have a history of the condition in their family are much more likely to develop it than those who don’t.

• Other related conditions involving hardened tissues. Approximately a third of men who develop Peyronie's disease also have hardened tissues in other areas around the body, including the feet and hands. Many men with Peyronie’s disease also suffer from a condition called Dupuytren's contracture, which is a condition that causes the fingers to pull inwards due to a cord-like thickening of tissues across the palm.