Diabetes ups urinary infection risk in older women

Rates of urinary tract infection (UTI) are higher among postmenopausal women with Diabetes than among those without diabetes, researchers report.

Dr. Edward J. Boyko, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues tracked the health of 218 diabetic and 799 non-diabetic women between the ages of 55 and 75 years from 1998 to 2002. Women's reports of a UTI were confirmed by microbiological culture and medical record review.

A total of 71 non-diabetic and 26 diabetic women developed UTI during follow-up, which translated to a rate equivalent to 6.7 and 12.2 infections per 100 persons per year, respectively.

That meant the women with diabetes had an 80 percent higher risk, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Further analysis showed that the increased risk for UTI was highest for women taking insulin and in those with a longer duration of diabetes.

"These characteristics were also good predictors of other diabetes complications such as (retina damage) or kidney disease," Boyko commented to Reuters Health.

"We did not find an association between recent glucose control ... and risk of urinary tract infection," Boyko said. "This finding suggests that urinary tract infection may be due to long-term effect of high glucose as opposed to a shorter-term exposure to high glucose."

The team also investigated whether residual urine in the bladder after voiding explained the difference in risk of UTI in diabetic women, "since the nerve damage that may occur in diabetes leads to impaired emptying of the bladder," Boyko explained.

However, "Although diabetic women had a greater post-void residual bladder volume on average than the non-diabetic women, we found that this difference did not explain the higher risk of UTI associated with diabetes."

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, March 15, 2005.