SWEDEN – A study in mice provides new insights that might one day lead to new treatments for erectile dysfunction in humans.
Men’s sexual health depends largely on the ability to achieve an erection, which can be impaired by aging and other health risk factors, including diabetes and atherosclerosis.
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University in Sweden discovered that cells called fibroblasts play a very important role in regulating blood flow in the penis.
These cells constitute the largest number of cells in the human cavernous body (CC). Erections are controlled in part by the corpora cavernosa (CC), a spongy, vascularized tissue found in the penis that can fill with blood and swell when the vessels dilate during an erection.
“Fibroblasts are the most abundant cells in the penis in both mice and humans, but they have been neglected in research,” says Eduardo Guimarães, a researcher in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institutet and first author of the paper. “Now we can show, using a very precise method called optogenetics, that it has a very important role in regulating blood flow in the penis, which is what makes the penis erect.”
According to the results, fibroblasts (fibroblasts or young fibroblasts) help erection by absorbing chemicals that dilate blood vessels in the penis.
The effectiveness of this process depends on the number of fibroblasts. The study, published in the journal Science, found that the number of fibroblasts in the penis is affected by the frequency of erections, meaning that the more frequent the erection, the greater the number of fibroblasts, and vice versa.
“It’s not really strange,” explained Christian Goretz, senior researcher at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institutet. “If you put in a lot of effort, your body will adapt,” he explained. “If you run regularly, eventually breathing will become easier while running.”
The researchers found that older mice had fewer fibroblasts in the penis, which was also reflected in decreased blood flow.
The researchers point out that the ability to have an erection also decreases with age in humans, which may be due in part to a decrease in the number of fibroblasts in the penis.
Source: Independent
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2024-04-04 17:31:43
