Metabolic syndrome correlates with peri-urethral fibrosis secondary to chronic prostate inflammation: Evidence of a link in a cohort of patients undergoing radical prostatectomy

Objectives: To investigate the pathological relationship between metabolic syndrome and peri-urethral fibrosis status secondary to chronic prostate inflammation. Methods: Peri-urethral prostate tissue from 80 consecutive patients who underwent retropubic radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer was analyzed. Patients were divided in two groups according to whether or not they had a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. A 16-peri-urethral core bench biopsy was carried out on each radical prostatectomy specimen to evaluate the extent of peri-urethral inflammatory infiltrate, and collagen and elastin amount. Spearman's correlation analysis was used to test the association between variables. Furthermore, the data were used to define a bivariate logistic regression model in which the presence (>50% collagen amount for each patients) or absence (≤50% collagen amount) of fibrosis was analyzed after adjusting for clinical and pathological variables. Results: A significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of International Prostatic Symptoms Score (P