PETALING JAYA: A 33-year-old man in Ireland left doctors bewildered after they discovered that he had been injecting himself with his own semen in a failed attempt to cure his back pain.

According to The Star's Malay-language portal mStar, the man had been injecting his arm with his own semen for a-year-and-a-half, until he finally sought medical attention due to an excruciating back pain.

Doctors who attended to him, found rashes and bruises on his arm, which was infected with cellulitis.

Dr Lisa Dunne wrote in a case study of it in the Irish Medical Journal that:"He had devised this 'cure' independent of any medical advice.

According to Dr Dunne, the man revealed that he had injected one "dose" of semen every month for 18 consecutive months using a hypodermic needle purchased online.

"His situation did not improve after injecting the semen. But after spending a few nights in the hospital, it has relieved some of his pain," said Dr Dunne.

However, the man discharged himself from the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

Dr Dunne said this was the first reported case that involved a "semen injection for medical treatment".

"He had failed in a few attempts to inject the secretion in his body," she wrote, adding that the man described his attempt as an "innovative method to treat back pain".

Dr Dunne also said that there hadn't been any form of experiments made on the effects of semen on human veins and muscle.

According to the journal, the only past experiments of semen injections were done by injecting human semen into rats and rabbits.