The Human Female Prostate

by Milan Zaviacic M.D. Sample Plate:
Fig.III/4 Unusually rich glands in the female prostate with thickened prostatic secretion (corpora amylacea?) in some glands. Smooth musculature (musculofibrous) tissue can be seen surrounding the glands. Female, 27-year-old, HE, x 175

View Table of Contents

THE HUMAN FEMALE PROSTATE

From Vestigial Skene's Paraurethral Glands and Ducts to Woman's Functional Prostate

Milan Zaviacic

Published by SAP (Slovak Academic Press, Ltd.) in Bratislava 1999. First edition, 171 pages.  The publication is available as a book or CD-ROM.

The monograph written by the internationally recognized author, scientist, pioneer in the field of the female prostate as a functional genitourinary-female organ, makes the reader familiar with updated knowledge on the structure, function and diseases of this small female organ.  The monograph rounds the almost 20 years of successful scientific and research work of the monograph author and his co-workers, devoted to woman's prostate, published in more than 40 papers, mostly appearing in renowned international scientific journals.

The monograph includes many colored and black and white illustrations and is split into 11 chapters representing self-contained units; at the same time however, important notions also appear repeatedly, in new contexts and interpretations.  They focus on the history of the female prostate, its size, weight and macroanatomy, histology and ultra-structural parameters of secretory, basal and intermediary cells of the female prostatic glands.  Other chapters deal with the enzyme equipment of the female prostate and its exocrine arid neuroendocrine function.  Special attention is paid to the implications of the exocrine function of the female prostate for gynecology, urology, forensic medicine, chronobiology and sexology, including information about the biological phenomenon of female ejaculation and the role played in it by the female prostate.  Prostate Specific Antigen as well as its prostatic and extra-prostatic sources in the female are further topics covered.  An important part of the monograph (from the clinical viewpoint) is devoted to the diseases of the female prostate, including its inflammation, benign prostate hyperplasia and cancer.  The closing chapter of the monograph explains and provides justification for avoiding Skene's eponym or the histologically descriptive term "paraurethral glands and ducts when referring to female prostate; this approach has been the basis for perceiving the female prostate as a vestigial, rudimentary and afunctional gland.

The monograph with the foreword by the prominent US scientist, biologically oriented andrologist and oncologist Richard J. Ablin, PhD, the discoverer of the Prostate Specific Antigen, is written in the English language.  A detailed summary in the Slovak and English languages provides also the Slovak reader who is not proficient in English with an opportunity to familiarize him/herself with the issue.

The monograph is intended to physicians, in particular to urologists, gynecologists, experts in forensic medicine, pathologists. anatomists, histologists, specialists in pathological physiology and physiobogists, chronobiologists, sexologists, as well as to others who may come across the issue of the female prostate and its diseases in their work; further, to medical students, students of, and graduates from biological and natural sciences, the Police Academy (criminologists) and, last but not least, to educated lays. The female prostate should no more be a secret and mysterious female organ (as being referred to the past) to anybody who has read the monograph.

Gary Schubach, Ed.D., A.C.S.