Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffOrchitis is an inflammation of one or both testicles, most commonly associated with the virus that causes mumps. At least one-third of males who contract mumps after puberty develop orchitis.
Other causes of orchitis usually are bacterial, including sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), such as gonorrhea or chlamydia. Bacterial orchitis often results from epididymitis, an inflammation of the coiled tube (epididymis) at the back of the testicle that stores and carries sperm. In that case, it's called epididymo-orchitis.
Swelling and pain are the most common signs and symptoms of orchitis.
- Epididymitis and orchitis. American Urological Association. http://www.urologyhealth.org/search/index.cfm?topic=490&search=orchitis&searchtype=and. Accessed Aug. 25, 2009.
- Trojian T. et al. Epididymitis and orchitis: An overview. American Family Physician. http://www.aafp.org/afp/20090401/583.html. Accessed Aug. 25, 2009.
- Orchitis. The Merck Manuals: The Merck Manual for Healthcare Professionals. http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec17/ch239/ch239e.html. Accessed Aug. 25, 2009.
- Mumps. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/mumps-508.pdf. Accessed Aug. 27, 2009.
