Alteration of Autonomic Nervous System Function in Male Patients with Overactive Bladder Syndrome

Background/Aims: Overactive bladder is a frequently encountered urological disease that has debilitating effects on quality of life. Some hypotheses have been brought forward in order to explain the main pathophysiology underlying this clinical phenomenon, however the exact mechanism remains unclear and the relevant reports are limited in number, confined to female patients and have conflicting results. Therefore, we aimed to examine one of these hypotheses -autonomic nervous system dysfunction- in male patients with overactive bladder. Methods: We enrolled 41 male patients with overactive bladder and 43 healthy males in this study. Their electrocardiographic signals are recorded in the prevoiding and postvoiding periods and then converted to heart rate variability parameters which may reveal autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Results: Standard deviation of normal-to-normal interval, square root of the mean squared differences of successive normal-to-normal intervals, low frequency signal and low frequency/high frequency ratio were found to be significantly lower while high frequency signal was significantly higher in the patient group compared to healthy controls (p<0.05). Conclusions: Heart rate variability was attenuated in male patients with overactive bladder and parasympathetic predominance was observed during both prevoiding and postvoiding periods, contrary to some of the previous reports revealing sympathetic predominance in female patients.