Yes, absolutely classic symptoms of prostatitis (inflammation of the prostate). When your prostate generates pain, your brain is unable to identify the source of the pain, and it often gets referred to tip if the penis, testicles, and back passage, when there's nothing wrong with them. Painful ejaculation and painful digital rectal exam are also classic.
It sounds like, if it's bacterial, it's resistant to Ciprofloxacin, or you didn't take it for long enough. Ciprofloxacin (and some other antibiotics) are also anti-inflammatory, and that can give some temporary relief, even if it isn't able to kill the bacteria, but then the symptoms return quickly afterwards because the infection is still there.
Prostatitis infection rarely shows up in urine or semen samples, because it tends to block off the areas of the prostate where it is. Proper diagnosis really requires expressed prostatic fluid to be obtained and sent for culturing to identify any bacteria (a urology procedure), and to find which antibiotic it's sensitive to (rather than resistant to), so you can then be prescribed the right antibiotic. There are relatively few antibiotics which can get into the prostate because it has a barrier (like the blood/brain barrier) that prevents many antibiotics from getting in to it, and it tends to need to longer course of antibiotics. It is difficult to find urologists who genuinely specialise in prostatitis (even though all say they do). All that most GP's can do is somewhat randomly try different antibiotics and they might not prescribe them for long enough, which can lead to antibiotic resistance without resolving any infection.
Prostatitis isn't always caused by bacterial infection in any case.
You could join The FOPS Q&A support meeting on Wednesday evening on Zoom, as one of our regular urologists is a specialist in prostatitis. See my profile for details.
Edited by member 03 Nov 2024 at 08:33
| Reason: Not specified