Synthetic tissue restores pigs’ erections

about the episode

About half of all men between the ages of 40 and 70 sometimes or regularly experience erectile dysfunction. About 5 percent have Peyronie’s disease after injury to the penis, which can be very painful and in which scar tissue makes it difficult for the penis to function.

Some studies are looking at how to repair a patient’s tissues in such a situation. For example, using tissue from another place in the body where the damage is. But according to Chinese researchers, that doesn’t work very often, so they came up with another idea: synthetic tissue.

They have developed something similar for the tissues of the penis that play a role in an erection that should not be dangerous in the body among other tissues. Now comes the number one caveat to this study: Then they started testing it on pigs.

Mentioned there: in pigs with damaged tissue in their penises, but as you will understand this always means that the animals were not damaged themselves. This makes discussing these types of studies difficult. Is being able to have an erection independently thanks to inventions like this worth the suffering of these pigs? I’d say no. Then wait until it can be tested some other way.

But it worked. Erections were possible again with the implanted tissue. At least: with these pigs. Is the penis fully restored? number. It’s also the second side note. Often, multiple types of tissue are damaged in these types of injuries. And despite the fact that a month later the artificial tissue was still doing its job and had not been discarded, the surrounding tissue did not recover.

They want to change that in continuing research. They also think it should be able to work elsewhere in the body, in case of other damage. As far as I’m concerned, they can then do those studies on themselves, and we’ll know faster if it really works for people.

Read more: Synthetic tissue restores erectile function in pigs.