A real problem

After a decade as a urologist dealing with men’s reproductive health issues, by the early 2000s Dr. Gilbert had heard repeatedly from his male patients about their problems with premature ejaculation.

The idea for Promescent “was based on the needs of his patients,” said Elizabeth, his wife of 24 years and mother of their two adult sons.

While premature ejaculation, or PE as it’s known, may not seem as big a deal as its seemingly more serious medical relative, erectile dysfunction, or ED, “it is certainly a real problem,” said Sharon Parish, an internist who works with men with sexual health issues in New York. “And I think it is under recognized and under treated in men.”

PE can lead to difficulty becoming pregnant, either because — in rare cases — some men ejaculate too soon, or because of the stress the condition causes between partners.

“Here’s the way it causes a problem,” said Ira Sharlip, a urologist in San Francisco who has consulted with Absorption on Promescent and recommends it to his patients. “If a man ejaculates too quickly, interrupting sexual intercourse, and there is stress in the relationship, they can stop having regular sex. If you don’t have sex frequently enough, it makes it difficult to get pregnant.”

Both Dr. Parish and Dr. Sharlip were members of the international committee that in 2014 agreed upon the first unified definition of PE. The committee split the definition into two categories: “Lifelong PE” is defined as a condition in a patient who has always had PE and ejaculates within one minute of vaginal penetration; “acquired PE” describes a patient who ejaculates within three minutes.

Existing studies about how many men suffer from PE still have wide ranges, from a low of about 8 percent to highs of about 30 percent of all men, which on the high end would put it in about the same size market category as ED.