Cyrano de Bergerac Would be Thrilled
New Study Finds Correlation Between Big Noses and Big Penises
This weekend my Facebook feed was full of the masked faces and band-aided arms of my friends’ 12- to 15-year-old kids after they got the vaccine. I did not post a picture of my own 14 year old, but I did point out that she booked herself an appointment within hours of the CDC giving the go ahead. It was a such a relief to me and so many parents I know. We have started seeing our own parents again and even hugging friends, but life can’t really return to normal until our kids are protected too (and we’re not there yet as the vaccine has not been approved for the 0-11 set). I realize, though, that even as my subset of friends celebrates the approval of the Pfizer vaccine for younger teens and other countries desperately wish they had the supply we have, many people in the United States remain resistant to vaccination. I think the CDC’s new mask rules were at least in part made as a way to persuade these Americans, “you hate masks, get vaccinated and you can ditch them.” New Jersey offered people beer. Shake Shack offered them fries. Ohio has gone so far as to create a lottery drawing, everyone who gets vaccinated is automatically entered and five lucky ones will win $1 million each. In March, getting a vaccine appointment felt like winning the lottery to me, now we have to make it a literal lottery to convince people to get the shot? I remain disappointed that a year of living with restrictions because of a deadly virus for which there was no vaccine and 3.4 million deaths worldwide were not enough to get past distrust and misinformation. But since it clearly wasn’t, I invite everyone to read this article in Tuesday’s New York Times which explains the four kinds of people who are not getting vaccinated, where in the country each type is more common, and potential ways to reach these people because, apparently, a year of living with a deadly virus and 3.4 million deaths worldwide were not enough.
Covid-19 Infection Can Be Hard on Penises
There’s more evidence out this week that Covid-19 infection can be hard on penises (see what I did there). Researchers looked at the cases of two men who sought penile implant surgery because of severe erectile dysfunction (ED) that persisted months after recovering from Covid-19. They found that virus particles remained in the men’s penile tissue months later and that the virus seems to have damaged blood vessels. This comes on top of the Italian research I mentioned a few weeks ago that found higher rates of ED among Covid-19 survivors.
Both of the men featured in the new article in The World Journal of Men’s Health had normal erectile function before having Covid. One was very sick with the virus and was hospitalized for two weeks while the other was only mildly ill but had a history of high blood pressure and clogged arteries before getting infected. Both had recovered with few long-term side effects other than severe ED months before they sought penile implants.
Penile implants are usually a last resort when all other ED treatments fail. Most penile implants are inflatable devices that are surgically placed in the penis and surrounding areas. With a three-piece implant a man has two inflatable cylinders inside the penis, a pump and release valve in the scrotum, and a fluid-fill reservoir under the abdominal wall. When he wants an erection, he pumps fluid into the cylinders. At all other times the penis remains soft. There are also semi-rigid implants that are always the same firmness. While there is less possibility that these fail, they put constant pressure on the inside of the penis which can cause injury.
The surgery gave researchers an opportunity to examine the men’s penile tissue. They then compared it to tissue from two other men seeking implants for ED who had never had Covid-19. The two Covid patients both had virus particles in their penile tissue and researchers also found evidence of endothelial dysfunction—a different kind of ED which can happen in various parts of the body. It’s a condition in which the linings of small blood vessels aren’t functioning properly and can’t bring adequate blood supply to the organ in question. The two men seeking implants who had not had Covid-19 did not show this kind of damage to their blood vessels.
It’s not surprising that Covid-19 could harm blood vessels in the penis as it has been known to harm blood vessels elsewhere in the body, including in the heart. And it’s not surprising that damaged blood vessels could cause erectile dysfunction as blood rushing into the penis is the basic mechanism behind erections.
Still, two patients are never enough to form definitive conclusions. But the study does add to a growing body (oops, I did it again) of research that Covid-19 may have negative repercussions on penises. As I said a few weeks ago, if only we could convince a certain portion of men that it’s not the mask or the vaccine that may rob them of their (toxic) masculinity, it’s the virus itself.
It’s Small, It’s Fast, It Can Tell You If You Have Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have invented a portable, app-based test for gonorrhea which can not only tell you if you have the common bacterial STI but if your infection will be resistant to certain antibiotics. In what can only be seen as an acronym stretch, they call their invention PROMPT—Portable, Rapid, On-cartridge, Magnetofluidic, Purification, and Testing platform, but we’ll forgive them for the clunker of a name since this could be a big advance in the field.
PROMPT is easy to use. A swab of bodily fluid is mixed with a magnetic solution in a tube and then a drop is loaded into a cartridge that snaps into the device. The replaceable cartridges, which cost about $2, contain a reagent. The device runs through 40 cycles of polymerase chain reaction, also known as PCR, which we are now all familiar with as the gold standard of Covid-19 testing. And then, through the Bluetooth app, the test results are displayed on a cellphone. The whole process takes about 15 minutes.
This is a big improvement on testing in labs and hospitals which can take up to a week to return results (during which time the patient can spread the infection to others), and is faster than at-home lab tests which require users to send a swab or urine sample to the testing company for results in 2-10 days.
PROMPT was tested in sexual health clinics in both Baltimore and Kampala, Uganda. It correctly identified the most common strain of gonorrhea about 97% of the time and was completely accurate in determining whether the strain of gonorrhea it detected would respond to ciproflaxin.
We may all remember Cipro as the drug that people were stockpiling during the anthrax scare of 2001 before we knew that the real value was in toilet paper and gas. It was once the first line treatment for gonorrhea but some strains of the bacteria—which had already become resistant to sulfonamides, penicillins, and tetracyclines—became resistant to it as well. In 2007, the CDC stopped recommending fluoroquinolones (the class of drugs that includes cipro) and instead suggested cephalosporinses.
While many experts are content using ceftriaxone, which remains the current recommended treatment for gonorrhea, others believe that going back to Cipro for strains that aren’t resistant to it could be helpful as this very clever germ continues to develop resistance. Which is where PROMPT’s technology comes in. It is a pocket-sized device that can tell a provider in mere minutes not just if a patient has gonorrhea but if that infection will or will not respond to Cipro.
Tza-Huei Wang, the team leader on the project and a professor of mechanical engineering, said: “It ensures that patients are diagnosed on the spot, and treatment can begin immediately, improving clinical outcomes. This will be especially valuable in low-resource settings, where well-equipped laboratories are not always available to every patient.” The team hopes that the device will be available in two to three years.
Man, You Have a Really Big…Nose
The latest entry into the field of “ if you have a big [X], you must really have a big dick” is a study out of Japan that has found a correlation between the size of a person’s nose and the length of their penis. Cyrano de Bergerac would be thrilled.
Apparently, the authors of the study, which was published earlier this year in the journal Basic and Clinical Andrology, were inspired by the saying “big nose, big hose.” (That’s a saying?) They set out to see if this was true by measuring both the noses and the hoses of 126 recently deceased men ages 30 to 59.
The average stretched penis length (the penis is measured in an upright position to best mimic an erection) among the cadavers was 4.5 inches and there was a definite correlation between this measurement and nose length. Men with shorter noses, about 1.77 inches, had an average stretched penis length of 4.08 inches. In comparison, the men with larger noses, about 2.17 inches, had an average stretched penis size of 5.28 inches. That looks like a huge difference but remember we’re dealing in averages so a few super-long or super-short schlongs could be skewing the results.
This could be good news for big-schnozzed men everywhere though it is important to note that the sample size was small and homogenous (all of the men were Japanese). Also, as a sex educator, I’m morally and professionally obligated to remind all readers that penis size is not the be all and end all of sexual performance and that most sexual partners really won’t care how long your member is.
Another Cool Newsletter
Before I go, I want to suggest that you all check out my friend Jane’s new(ish) substack newsletter, Whimsy and Pique. She’s a great writer—funny and poignant. This week she takes on the Happily Ever After myth we were all raised with and decides to rewrite it for herself. She writes: “Love ebbs and flows, rises and falls. We can love without grasping, lose without self-destructing, travel in and out of Marriageland without getting trapped at the border.” See what I mean, a great writer. Check it out here.