‘Staying Hot’: Investigating the influence of overnight conditions on the penile skin temperature during male sexual arousal: a novel methodology for nocturnal erection detection

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the impact of overnight environ-mental conditions on erectile penile temperature within a controlled setting, with theaim of investigating the feasibility of using temperature measurements for nocturnalerection detection in erectile dysfunction diagnostics.Subjects/patients and methods: We conducted a proof-of-concept study involving10 healthy male participants aged 20 to 25. The study was carried out at the Depart-ment of Urology, St. Antonius Ziekenhuis, the Netherlands. Penile temperaturethermistor measurements were taken during visually aroused erections of partici-pants in naked state and in simulated overnight condition (underwear and blankets).Main outcome variables were peak and baseline temperature during erectile periods.To minimize the impact of differences in erectile strength and duration between con-secutive measurements, we applied randomization to the order of the environmentalconditions.Results: We observed a significant increase in penile temperature during erection inboth the naked ( p < 0.01) and simulated overnight condition (p < 0.01). The meantemperature increase was 1.70 and 0.67C, respectively. While penile temperature returned to baseline immediately after naked erections, the ‘Staying Hot effect’ wasnoted in the simulated overnight condition measurements, where the temperatureremained elevated at peak temperature for the entire 30-min period following theerection.Conclusions: The findings from this study indicate that the penile temperature notonly significantly increases during naked sexual arousal but is also detectable undersimulated overnight conditions. This underscores the potential of using temperature measurements for nocturnal erection detection, representing a crucial initial step indeveloping a modernized, non-invasive sensor system for ambulatory erectile dys-function diagnostics. Further research, including an overnight study, is needed to gain