Having an injection of booze in the bum could help millions of men

A SHOT of booze could help millions of men get a better night’s sleep, research shows.

The alcohol jab up the backside helped patients suffering from an enlarged prostate, the study found.

The injection shrank the gland by a third – slashing the need for night time loo visits by around half.

Doctors hailed the findings as “excellent news” for middle-aged men, saying the results were as good as many current NHS treatments.

Two million are diagnosed with the condition, but up to half of over-50s are thought to be affected.

Symptoms of an enlarged prostate include incontinence and repeated bathroom trips, particularly at night.

It is because the oversized gland presses into the bladder and blocks the urethra, the vessel through which it empties.

Mild symptoms can be controlled by drugs, but they can cause side-effects such as loss of libido.

And every year, around 45,000 men need an operation to an enlarged prostate.

As well as being painful and invasive, it can affect fertility and even cause impotence.

Patients given the new treatment did not suffer any severe side-effects.

It involved injecting an enlarged prostate with nine shots of pure alcohol using a 25cm needle through the wall of the rectum.

The trial on 60 middle-aged men shows the gland shrunk by 35 per cent, with participants experienced a 48 per cent reduction in symptoms.

Sufferers also had a near doubling in the speed of peeing.

Doctors think the jab works by killing unwanted tissue, helping to shrink the oversized prostate.

Lead researcher Alessandri Rafael Espinoza, from University Hospital Caracas, Venezuela, said: “The reduction in the size of the prostate with ethanol [pure alcohol] was significant.

“Ethanol injection can be an effective, non-surgical alternative in treatment of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia [enlarged prostate]”.

The study was published in the journal Spanish Urological Records.

An enlarged prostate does not increase the risk of getting cancer.

But the symptoms can be similar, leading to many men with the problem getting needlessly tested.

It is caused by benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), in which an overgrown gland presses into the bladder.

Commenting on the findings, Professor Raj Persad, consultant urologist with Bristol Urology Associates, said: “It looks to be a very promising treatment.

“Because of difficulties and complications with standard prostate surgery, we have looked at a wide range of treatments for BPH, including medication and laser vaporisation.

“But none of these is a perfect solution and the search goes on.

“Alcohol injection seems to provide good results in ‘unblocking’ the bladder and improving quality of life, and these new results are comparable if not better than other treatments which is excellent news.”