Urological dysfunction in young women. An inheritance of childhood?

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the correlation of a history of lower urinary tract symptomatology during childhood to lower urinary tract dysfunction in young adult women. SUBJECTS/PATIENTS AND METHODS: This was a multicenter, prospective, case-control study conducted from April 2013 to November 2015. The trial was registered in ClinicalTrials. gov (NCT02185287). Three-hundred women, 18 to 40 years old, participated. Cases were women attending urogynecology clinics for various lower urinary tract complaints and controls were recruited from a healthy population. Exclusion criteria were designed to avoid common causes of lower urinary tract dysfunction and symptoms and included diabetes mellitus, neurological disease and pelvic inflammatory disease. All women completed a self-administered 77-item questionnaire exploring childhood urological and bowel history, as well as current urological, bowel and sexual symptoms. Statistical analysis was performed using Chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests to compare categorical variables. Multivariate logistic regression models were fit for the prediction of the adult outcomes, incorporating as explanatory variables all those that showed a significant p-value in bivariate analysis. P-value <0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: Women with childhood urinary voiding and storage symptoms had higher prevalence of these symptoms in adult life compared to women without such history. Women with urinary tract infections during childhood had a higher incidence of adult urinary infections compared to women without this problem in childhood. CONCLUSIONS: Lower urinary track dysfunction in childhood seems to "persist" in young adult life but the implications of this finding in clinical practice need to be defined in future studies.