Takeaway
- Clinicians should consider offering patients with Parkinson disease (PD) behavioral therapy as a first-line treatment for overactive bladder (OAB) symptoms.
Why this matters
- Current guidelines for patients with PD recommend OAB treatment with anticholinergic drugs, which can contribute to cognitive impairment.
- OAB symptoms such as urgency incontinence and nocturia are associated with falls, which cause increased mortality in PD.
Study design
- Researchers studied the effects of exercise-based behavioral therapy on patients who had PD and ≥4 incontinence episodes each week (N=47; age range, 54-85 years; 74% men; 10% black; 83% white).
- Funding: NIH; Department of Veterans Affairs.
Key results
- Incontinence reduction was similar for both patients who participated in behavioral therapy (−6.2±8.7) and for the untreated control group (−6.5±13.8; P=.89).
- Behavioral therapy participants reported OAB symptom reductions (−3.1±2.8) comparable with those of the control group (−1.9±2.2; P=.19).
- Significant differences in improvements were reported both by behavioral therapy participants and by the control group in QoL (−22.6±19.1 vs −7.0±18.4, respectively; P=.048) and bother (−12.6±17.2 vs −6.7±8.8, respectively; P=.037).
Limitations
- The sample size was too small for subgroup analysis.
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