A Complementary Therapy with Cranberry Juice for Chronic Prostatitis

Although chronic prostatitis is extremely frequent, there had been very vague analyses and solutions with regard to this disease and the treatment is still challenging. An antibiotic is usually given for a longer period of time, 4-12 weeks. For years, the cranberry(Vaccinium macrocarpon) has been widely used to prevent and treat urinary tract infections, because cranberry has been shown to interfere with bacterial adherence to urothelium. The main objective of this investigation was to verify whether or not the cranberry juice is capable of the complementary therapy for chronic prostatitis.

The selected subjects were 69 patients diagnosed with NIH-category IIIb chronic prostatitis between the periods of March to October, 2004. The first-line treatment was daily 3 times intake of levofloxacin 100mg for 4 weeks. Randomly selected 34 patients were prescribed with 150ml of cranberry juice intake, two times a day for 12 weeks and the remainder 35 patients were managed conservatively only after ceasing the antibiotic. The patients were reevaluated 4 and 12 weeks later.

At the baseline stage, NIH-CPSI scores were 25.8±7.4 and 25.4±7.0 for the cranberry juice group and the conservative group. 4 weeks after the antibiotic treatment, they were 16.91±4.5 and 17.8±4.8 and thus implied the improvements without difference between the two groups(p>0.05). For the conservative group, there were 6 patients who experienced deteriorations 8 to 12 weeks later and as the NIH-CPSI scores reached 19.2±7.3, thus there were no significant improvements compared to baseline(p>0.05). Within the cranberry juice group, there was no patient with symptoms worsened and the NIH-CPSI scores at 12 weeks reached 13.5±3.9 with significant improvements compared to baseline(p<0.05). All the patients did not experience any side effects due to the cranberry juice intake.

Under the present circumstances of proposing the distinctive standard and providing a suggestion to replace the antibiotics for the treatment of chronic prostatitis, the short timed and limited use of the antibiotics accompanied by the cranberry juice demonstrated sufficient possibility and effectiveness. Thus the cranberry juice could be appointed as the complementary therapy in chronic prostatitis without serious adverse effects.