Dexamethasone improves therapeutic outcomes in a preclinical bacterial epididymitis mouse model.

Study Question: Can dexamethasone improve infertility-related cauda epididymidal tissue damage caused by bacterial epididymitis?

Summary Answer: Dexamethasone in addition to anti-microbial treatment effectively reduces long-term deleterious epididymal tissue damage by dampening the host's adaptive immune response.

What Is Known Already: Despite effective anti-microbial treatment, ~40% of patients with epididymitis experience subsequent sub- or infertility. An epididymitis mouse model has shown that the host immune response is mainly responsible for the magnitude of epididymal tissue damage that is fundamentally causative of the subsequent fertility issues.