Even in urological handbooks the female prostate is given very little attention. Since i88o the organ has been known as Skene’s glands. Skene was a gynaecologist and published on the subject in a medical journal. In fact, the female prostate ought to be named after the shortlived scientist Reinier de Graaf. Shortly before his death he described not only its anatomy but also its physiology. He observed that fluid was produced by women as well as men during sexual arousal and orgasm. In modern medicine it has thus far received little attention, though Professor Milan Zaviacic of the Comenius University in Bratislava, a pathologist, has made it his life’s work. In 1999 he published an extensive scientific monograph on the subject.
Like the male prostate, its female counterpart produces a specific antigen (psa), acid phosphatase, glycoproteins and fructose. The Skene glands weigh between 2.6 and 5.2 g and are located at the back of the urethra, that is, between the urethra and the vagina. Their dimensions are: on average 3.3 cm long, 1.9 cm wide and i cm high. There are several scores of drainage outlets from the gland tissue to the urethra, many more than in men. Zaviacic’s test subjects were required to wear the same cotton panties for several days. The professor then coloured the part of the panties that had been in varying degrees of contact with the end of the urethra. Through this specific colouring it was proved that acid phosphatase, abundant quantities of which are produced in the male prostate, also flowed from the female urethra.
Various researchers have tried to discover what quantity of fluid women lose on ejaculation. The values vary from 3 to 50 millilitres on each occasion. While by no means all women can feel themselves ejaculating (estimates vary between 6 and 40%) it is probable that a form of ejaculation at orgasm is universal. Of course, researchers can capture the ejaculate for examination. If that is not possible, urine can, for example, be examined before and after an orgasm for certain substances, including psa. The psa content of female ejaculate averages 0.82 nanolitres per millilitre. One may speculate about the significance of the existence of the female prostate, for example for sexology, urology and gynaecology. As regards sexology, it is plausible that the Grafenberg or G-spot, first described in the 1950s, is in fact the female prostate. For the urologist it is important to know that some io per cent of urethral cancers involve an adenocarcinoma, that is, prostate cancer. In addition, the female prostate quite frequently becomes inflamed, and in such cases an antibiotic is no help at all. As with men, prostatitis in women is difficult to treat: antibiotics have difficulty in penetrating the prostate.
chapter four