There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
We reviewed the epidemiological literature on the association of obesity and urinary
incontinence, and summarized clinical trial data on the effect of weight loss on urinary
incontinence.
We systematically searched for published community based prevalence studies with bivariate
or multivariate analysis of the association of urinary incontinence and overweight/obesity
in women. Case series and randomized controlled trials of the effect of surgical,
behavioral and pharmacological weight loss on urinary incontinence are summarized.
Epidemiological studies showed that obesity is a strong independent risk factor for
prevalent and incident urinary incontinence. There was a clear dose-response effect
of weight on urinary incontinence with each 5-unit increase in body mass index associated
with about a 20% to 70% increase in the urinary incontinence risk, and the maximum
effect of weight rarely exceeded an OR of greater than 4 to 5 on well controlled analyses.
The odds of incident urinary incontinence during 5 to 10 years increased by approximately
30% to 60% for each 5-unit increase in body mass index. There may be a stronger association
of increasing weight with prevalent and incident stress incontinence, including mixed
incontinence, than with urge incontinence and overactive bladder syndrome. Weight
loss studies indicated that surgical and nonsurgical weight loss led to significant
improvements in urinary incontinence symptoms.
Epidemiological studies document overweight and obesity as important risk factors
for urinary incontinence. Weight loss by surgical and more conservative approaches
is effective to decrease urinary incontinence symptoms and should be strongly considered
a first line treatment in this patient population.