Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Koro (disease)
Summary
Koro is a culture bound delusional disorder in which individuals have an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear, despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genitals. Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The syndrome occurs worldwide, and mass hysteria of genital-shrinkage anxiety has a history in Africa, Asia and Europe. In the United States and Europe, the syndrome is commonly known as genital retraction syndrome.
The condition can be diagnosed through psychological assessment along with physical examination to rule out genuine disorders of the genitalia that could be causing true retraction.
The word was borrowed from Malay and means the head of a turtle (or tortoise), referring to how it looks when they retract their heads into their shells.
Most patients report acute anxiety attacks due to perceived genital retraction and/or genital shrinkage, despite a lack of any objectively visible biological changes in the genitalia that are longstanding. "Longstanding" refers to changes that are sustained over a significant period and do not appear reversible, unlike the effect of cold temperatures on some genital regions that cause retraction. These changes may trigger a koro attack when observed, although the effects of cold temperatures are objectively reversible. According to literature, episodes usually last several hours, though the duration may be as long as two days. There are cases in which koro symptoms persist for years in a chronic state, indicating a potential co-morbidity with body dysmorphic disorder. In addition to retraction, other symptoms include a perception of alteration of penis shape and loss of penile muscle tone. In cases when patients have no perception of retraction, some patients may complain of genital paraesthesia or genital shortening. Among females, the cardinal symptom is nipple retraction in the breast, generally into the breast as a whole.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.