Urinary symptoms often affect women's sex life (Reuters)

MILAN (Reuters Health) - Women with lower urinary tractsymptoms, or LUTS, are more likely to have sexual problems thanwomen without LUTS, researchers reported here at the annualmeeting of the European Association of Urology.

Dr. Con Kelleher, at Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital Trustsin London, and colleagues examined the impact of LUTS onwomen's sexual functioning using a database that containsrecords from 333 general practices.

The study included 1,377,000 women 18 years of age or olderwho had been seen at one of the practices from 2000 through2006.

The rate of sexual dysfunction among women with LUTS wastwice that of women with no LUTS, researchers found.

The data also showed that women between 30 and 60 years ofage were significantly more likely to report sexual dysfunctionthan women outside this age range.

Overall, the occurrence of overactive bladder,incontinence, and voiding problems, as well as sexualdifficulties, increased markedly during the study period.

"The data suggest that the relationship between sexualdysfunction and LUTS (including overactive bladder) should beconsidered in women when diagnosing and treating theseconditions," Kelleher said.