Looking for links between rheumatoid arthritis and urinary problems
Story originally posted on July 10, 2006
It has long been observed that Interstitial Cystitis patients have a tendency to be prone to urinary tract infections (UTI), but it’s not nearly as often that a study looks at the incident rate of IC-like symptoms and UTIs amongst people with conditions that are found with some frequency amongst the IC population. Researchers have noted new studies which show that patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a higher than average rate of IC occurrences, in fact a report published in 2003 indicated that RA is the second most common disease associated with IC.
As a result of such findings and long standing reports from the both the IC and RA communities, a recent study observed 198 RA patients, all 40 years of age or older, in the hopes of seeing if a higher level of UTIs or IC symptoms could be seen amongst such patients (while the study finding did not say, it is worth hazarding a guess that these 198 patients were not already reporting that they had urological problems, but instead this was rather a random group of RA patients). The results of this study were analyzed against those from a group of similarly aged controls. In both instances patients and test subjects were excluded if they were taking any medications which could bring about symptoms of dry mouth or dry eyes, or if they presently had a UTI. In total the study compared 679 controls against the 198 RA patients.
Interestingly when scored with evolutions standards for both UTIs (The American Urological Association Symptom Index) and IC (O'Leary-Sant Symptom Index) both groups had similar findings in regards to frequency of either urological problem. However the same study showed that patients with both RA and Sjogren's syndrome (SS) did tend to score higher on the O'Leary Sant Symptom index for IC symptoms.
In the end what was concluded from this study is that there seems to be some indication that while patients which RA are not showing higher than average occurrences of UTI or IC symptoms (at least not within this study), those patients with SS in conjunction with RA do seem to have a slightly higher number of IC-like symptoms.
Though if IC and RA have been noted elsewhere to occur so often hand in hand, it begs the question, is it that IC patients are more likely to develop RA for some (unknown reason) after they already have interstitial cystitis than in it is for people with RA to in turn develop IC? If such is the case, why would that be happening? What is it about both IC and SS that seems to bring about a higher rate of RA, and what can be done to treat these problems? For the time being the only clear answer may be that more helpful and important studies, such as this one, will need to be carried out into the links between urological symptoms and RA.
Informational resources:
Lower urinary tract symptoms in female patients with rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid Arthritis May Be Related To Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms