Comorbidities of bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis: a population-based study

Study Type--System prevalence (cohort) Level of Evidence 2a. What's known on the subject? and What does the study add? Compared with the general population, patients with BPS/IC often experience difficulties in performing normal activities owing to physical limitations, decreased energy, greater pain and impaired social functioning With the exception of metastatic cancer, separate conditional logistic regression analyses in this study suggested that subjects with BPS/IC were consistently more likely than subjects without BPS/IC to have all the medical comorbidities investigated. When compared with subjects without BPS/IC, subjects with BPS/IC had particularly higher odds of comorbid neurological diseases, rheumatological diseases and mental illnesses.

Objective: • To explore the comorbid medical conditions of patients with bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis (BPS/IC) in Taiwan using a cross-sectional study design and a population-based administrative database.

Subjects and methods: • The study included 9269 subjects with BPS/IC and 46,345 randomly selected comparison subjects. • Conditional logistic regression analyses were performed to calculate the odds ratio for each of the 32 medical comorbidities (hypertension, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, blood loss anaemia, peripheral vascular disorders, stroke, ischaemic heart disease, hyperlipidaemia, hepatitis B or C, migraines, headaches, Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, ankylosing spondylitis, pulmonary circulation disorders, chronic pulmonary disease, diabetes, hypothyroidism, renal failure, fluid and electrolyte disorders, liver diseases, peptic ulcers, deficiency anaemias, depressive disorder, psychoses, metastatic cancer, solid tumour without metastasis, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and asthma) between subjects with and without BPS/IC.

Results: • With the exception of metastatic cancer, the subjects with BPS/IC had a significantly higher prevalence of all the medical comorbidities analysed than subjects without BPS/IC. • With the exception of metastatic cancer, separate conditional logistic regression analyses suggested that subjects with BPS/IC were consistently more likely than subjects without BPS/IC to have any of the medical comorbidities investigated in this study. • When compared with subjects without BPS/IC, subjects with BPS/IC had particularly higher odds of comorbid neurological diseases, rheumatological diseases and mental illnesses.

Conclusion: • Our results indicated that subjects with BPS/IC had an increased prevalence of multiple comorbidities.