That's an error. Chronic genitourinary pain is not associated with CBP, but with CPPS. So they selected men with CPPS and classed them as having CBP, which of course gave them the skewed results they obtained. Positive M&S test is not helpful one way or another, as other studies have shown.Finally, we defined CBP as the presence of 1) a positive result in the Meares and Stamey test and 2a) the presence of recurrent episodes of UTI or 2b) symptoms of already described chronic genitourinary pain.
So that's why they argue that their "results argue that a negative semen culture is not an adequate test to rule out CBP". How else can they explain the negative semen tests for bacteria in men with chronic genitourinary pain?
Moreover Lowell Parsons made the editorial comment:
It's really shameful that rubbish like this is being published, even though it is in unknown journals like "International Braz J Urol"This interesting study follows the traditional viewpoint that bacteria found in semen have clinical relevance in the generation of symptoms in men. The well conducted study from the NIH collaborative group showed that both symptomatic and asymptomatic men had similar bacterial counts in their semen, suggesting that these bacterial commensuals have nothing to do with the generation of symptoms seen in these men. This study basically attempts to reproduce the traditional belief, but adds the wrinkle of comparing the Meares and Stamey test with their own modifications. Although the study is of interest, one weakness should be mentioned: i.e. the semen bacteria may have nothing to do with the disease process.
