MEN who feel sick after having sex may be suffering because they are allergic to their own semen, according to Dutch researchers.

The illness - referred to as post orgasmic illness syndrome, or POIS - has flu-like symptoms that appear immediately after orgasm and can stick around for up to a week.



The condition has been documented in medical journals since 2002, but it is only now that this has been suggested as a cause.



The study, published yesterday in the online Journal of Sexual Medicine, states the cause of POIS is an allergy to the man's own semen, "as soon as it is triggered by ejaculation".



45 Dutch men took part in the study. 33 of the subjects consented to a skin-prick allergy test with their own system of which 29 had a positive test.



The symptoms include fever, runny nose, extreme fatigue and burning eyes.



Marcel Waldinger, a professor of sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told the Toronto Sun "these results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome."



He said the findings "contradict the idea that the complaints have a psychological cause."



Mr Waldinger suggested a treatment of hyposensitisation therapy - a process of exposing the body to gradually increasing amounts of the allergen over many years - can reduce the severity of the condition.



Originally published asPost-sex man flu may be allergy to own semen