BEIJING | Fri Apr 6, 2012 9:56am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - Five people in southern China have been charged with intentional injury in the case of a Chinese teenager who sold a kidney so he could buy an iPhone and an iPad, the government-run Xinhua News Agency said on Friday.

The five included a surgeon who removed a kidney from a 17-year-old boy in April last year. The boy, identified only by his surname Wang, now suffers from renal deficiency, Xinhua quoted prosecutors in Chenzhou city, Hunan province as saying.

According to the Xinhua account, one of the defendants received about 220,000 yuan (about $35,000) to arrange the transplant. He paid Wang 22,000 yuan and split the rest with the surgeon, the three other defendants and other medical staff.

The report did not say who received and paid for the kidney.

The teen was from Anhui, one of China's poorest provinces, where inhabitants frequently leave to find work and a better life elsewhere. He bought an iPhone and iPad, and when asked by his mother where he got the money, admitted selling a kidney.

Apple products are hugely popular in China, but are priced beyond the reach of many Chinese. IPhones start at 3,988 yuan ($633), and iPads begin at 2,988 yuan ($474).

Wang's renal deficiency is deteriorating, Xinhua quoted prosecutors as saying.

Only a fraction of the people who need organ transplants in China are able to get them, leading to "transplant tourism" where patients travel overseas for such operations, and to a black market for human organs.

China banned the trading of human organs in 2007, Xinhua said. Several other suspects involved in the case are still being investigated.

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Additional studies are needed to understand how sexual dysfunction affects dialysis patients' quality of life and psychological wellbeing.

Patients on dialysis can experience symptoms-such as pain, depression, impaired sleep, and fatigue-that affect their quality of life. Sexual dysfunction may also be a problem for many.

While there is increasing awareness of erectile dysfunction in men on hemodialysis, the sexual health of female dialysis patients has been examined in only a few suboptimally designed studies.

To look at the issue more thoroughly, Giovanni Strippoli, MD, PhD (Diaverum AB and Consorzio Mario Negri Sud, in Italy) and his colleagues in the Collaborative Depression and Sexual Dysfunction in Hemodialysis Working Group examined the responses of 659 female dialysis patients in Europe and South America who completed a questionnaire called the Female Sexual Function Index.

The researchers' analysis represents the first large study to examine sexual function in female dialysis patients.

They found 84 percent of all women and 55 per cent of sexually active women in the study experienced sexual problems.

Women with a partner were less likely to report sexual dysfunction than those without a partner.

Sexual dysfunction occurred more often in women who were older, were less educated, had signs of depression, had reached menopause, had diabetes, and took diuretic therapy (which helps the body get rid of unneeded water and salt).

Nearly all of the women who were not on a waiting list for a transplant and who were living without a partner reported sexual dysfunction.

"With this study, we shed light on the highly frequent condition of female sexual dysfunction in women on dialysis; this deserves attention and further study, since specific interventions are not yet available to address it," said Dr. Strippoli.

"Clinicians should not overlook the importance of problems such sexual dysfunction in people who receive hemodialysis for renal replacement therapy," the researcher added.

The finding will appear in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN).

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