What affects the occurrence of nocturia more: menopause or age?

Objectives: Prevalence studies show that nocturia is a very common condition, affecting older age groups in particular. In this study, we evaluate (1) the community-based prevalence of nocturia and its associated overactive bladder according to the patient's perception and disturbance to sleep and (2) whether age or menopausal (MP) transition has a greater effect on the occurrence of nocturia.

Methods: The questions regarding nocturia were part of the Bristol female lower urinary tract symptoms questionnaire (translated into Mandarin, the correlation coefficient r = 0.91). A total of 1253 (79.1% response rate) women were randomly sampled from a community-based female population, aged 20 years or older. Samples were subdivided into reproductive age, perimenopausal stage and elderly. If the participants reported having nocturia, they were further questioned with, "Does it interfere with your sleep or bother your daily life?" The chi-square test and the Cochran-Armitage trend test were used to analyze the data.

Results: Nocturia in older age groups was significantly higher than that of the younger age groups. The occurrence of nocturia was significantly associated with the elderly (compared with the reproductive age, P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in the prevalence of nocturia between the perimenopausal stage and the reproductive age (P > 0.05).

Conclusions: Our data implies that the increasing occurrence of nocturia is age-related and is not affected by the transition from pre- to postmenopause. Large-scale prospective longitudinal studies need to be conducted to clarify the effects of the aging process and estrogen deficiency.