Evidence Hub

Serum Metabolomics Unveils Novel Biomarkers Predicting Efficacy of Dapoxetine: A Prospective Study on Premature Ejaculation

Guangdong Hou, Yu Zheng, Ping Meng, Xujianli Feng, N. Hou, Massimo Federici, Fuli Wang, Bo Zhang et al.

Andrology, 2026

116 participants

Abstract

BACKGROUND

As the only approved oral medication for premature ejaculation (PE), dapoxetine faces a high discontinuation rate, primarily due to lower than expected efficacy. The impact of serum metabolites on PE treatment remains undetermined; therefore, we aimed to identify metabolites associated with dapoxetine efficacy.

METHODS

Clinical data and blood samples were collected from 116 patients with lifelong PE before 8 weeks of dapoxetine treatment. Serum was analyzed by untargeted metabolomics profiling. Efficacy was assessed with the Clinical Global Impression of Change (CGIC) scale: scores ≥ 1 were classified as the effective group and ≤ 0 as the ineffective group. Differential serum metabolites between the two groups were identified using the Mann-Whitney U test. Enrichment analysis determined metabolic pathways significantly associated with efficacy.

RESULTS

Compared to the ineffective group, indoleacrylic acid and (-)-riboflavin were significantly upregulated in the effective group, while 15-keto-13,14-dihydroprostaglandin A2, dienestrol, hippuric acid, and PC (16:0/16:0) were downregulated. The six metabolites showed a discriminatory ability of 0.646, 0.667, 0.633, 0.645, 0.651, and 0.635, respectively. Incorporating them significantly improved the accuracy of the model predicting efficacy (0.892 vs. 0.738, p = 0.001), suggesting that modulating these specific metabolites may be a novel strategy for PE treatment. Moreover, differential metabolic ions between the two…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free