Phenotypic approach to the management of chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome

Abstract

There is no one unifying etiological mechanism or specific curative therapy for chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS). However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that each of the proposed mechanisms may be important in some patients, and that many of our evaluated treatments do in fact work in subgroups of patients. We hypothesize that CP/CPPS patients are not a homogenous group suffering from a single disease entity. Rather, CP/CPPS patients are actually unique individuals with differing clinical phenotypes based on various etiological mechanisms with distinctive symptom complexes and progression trajectories. We call this the "Snow Flake Hypothesis." We propose the UPOINT (urinary, psychosocial, organ-specific, infection, neurologic/systemic, and tenderness domains) clinical phenotyping classification; we have validated the concept in a CP/CPPS cohort and have suggested that phenotypically directed therapy will improve our clinical treatment outcomes.