Cairns, Australia - A strong cocktail of toxins from the potentially deadly irukandji jellyfish may hold a remedy for impotent men, an Australian researcher said on Wednesday.
James Cook University academic Lisa-Ann Gershwin said she believes a sting from an irukandji tentacle, which causes excruciating pain, anxiety, paralysis and a potentially fatal rise in blood pressure, also causes prolonged erections in male victims.
"This is a bizarre extra symptom of irukandji syndrome in addition to the really dreadful life-threatening symptoms the syndrome gives," Gershwin said.
At least two people are known to have died from irukandji stings and hundreds of others have been treated in hospital.
Gershwin said she believes she has identified the particular species of irukandji responsible, after a local doctor, Peter Fenner, noticed the symptom in male patients.
She said isolating the cause of the erections from the toxins carried by the jellyfish could lead to a remedy for male impotency.
But the species concerned is extremely rare and had so far only been found around the Whitsunday Islands off the Queensland coast of north-eastern Australia.
"If we can get this other species into culture, certainly it would be able to supply the number of specimens that would be necessary to do that kind of research, to actually look at an impotency medication."
However, it has not yet reached the stage where it would be feasible for a pharmaceutical company to begin work on it, she said. - Sapa-AFP