Painful anal ulceration in homosexual men.

Forty homosexual men with painful anal ulceration were studied. Two patients had primary syphilis; sixteen men had primary anal herpes and twenty-two men had traumatic ulceration of the anal canal. The clinical features of the men with primary herpes were compared with those of the group with traumatic anal fissures. Fever, paraesthesiae in the buttocks and lower limbs, and difficulty in initiating micturition were found significantly more frequently in the former group of patients.