Tuberculosis of Prostate

Our plain-English summary of Tuberculosis of Prostate, by A. Sporer, O. Auerbach (1978).

The study

• Authors: A. Sporer, O. Auerbach
• Published: Urology, Volume 11 No.4, April 1978
• Type of article: Journal article
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This 1978 article is about tuberculosis of the prostate. It is not about asbestos. The authors reviewed how prostatic tuberculosis develops and described recent cases from a Veterans Administration hospital in East Orange, New Jersey. Of the hospital's last 1,000 autopsies (1972 to 1976), 26 showed tuberculosis, and none showed urogenital tuberculosis. In two men with long-standing kidney tuberculosis and urine positive for acid-fast bacilli, the prostate showed no tuberculosis. A third man, followed about twenty-five years, developed kidney scarring years after his prostatic tuberculosis. The authors read this as separate spread through the blood. In 75 cases with prostatic tuberculosis and urine positive for at least two years, examined with a cystoscope, they found no changes in the lining of the posterior, bulbous or pendulous urethra, although all had nodular or calcified prostate changes. In earlier rabbit experiments, bacilli injected into the kidney spread through the blood to almost all organs, including the prostate. The authors concluded that prostatic tuberculosis almost always results from spread through the blood, and had never seen an ascending prostate infection.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Review of earlier experimental and clinical studies, with case reports (3 cases), an autopsy review, and descriptions of the authors' clinical series and earlier animal experiments
• Who was studied: Patients at the Veterans Administration Hospital, East Orange, New Jersey: 1,000 autopsies (1972 to 1976), three case-report patients (men aged 72, 52 and 36), 75 cases studied cystoscopically, and 21 prostatectomies; also rabbits in earlier experiments
• Exposure: Tuberculosis infection (tubercle bacilli). No asbestos exposure is studied.
• Main results:
  • Of 1,000 autopsies, 26 showed tuberculosis (2.6 per cent), and none showed urogenital tuberculosis
  • Case 1: a man with kidney tuberculosis had no tuberculosis in his resected prostate
  • Case 2: a man with kidney tuberculosis had a normal-feeling prostate and normal prostatic urethral lining
  • Case 3: kidney scarring appeared years after prostatic tuberculosis, which the authors interpreted as separate seedings through the blood
  • In 75 cases with evidence of prostatic tuberculosis and urine positive for at least two years, no lining changes were found in the posterior, bulbous or pendulous urethra, although all had nodular or calcified prostate changes
  • Among the prostatectomies described, 3 of the 5 perineal prostatectomy cases developed a permanent fistula with changes in the prostatic urethral lining. The 6 suprapubic or retropubic cases showed no tuberculosis in the prostatic urethra.
  • In earlier rabbit experiments, human-strain tubercle bacilli injected into the kidney (1 mg or 4 mg) spread through the blood to almost all organs, including the prostate
  • A 1940 autopsy study by one of the authors, reviewed here, found the prostate involved one hundred times (85.2 per cent) among 112 cases of urogenital tuberculosis in 728 autopsies
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that tuberculosis of the prostate almost always results from spread through the blood (hematogenous seeding), and stated that they had never encountered an ascending infection of the prostate
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Because treatment now promotes healing, extensive disease is seldom seen and surgical specimens are rarely available for study
  • Small blood-borne (miliary) seedings of the kidneys could not be excluded in the prostatectomy cases

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Standing.

Browse return to medical research.