Gulf War, Other Younger Veterans Have Three Times Greater Urinary Incontinence

Written by Anthony Hardie, 91outcomes.com


(91outcomes.com) - A new medical journal article reports that Gulf War and other veterans age 55 and younger are almost three times more likely to report urinary incontinence than their civilian counterparts.

According to the article by Michele Sullivan, reported in Clinical Psychiatry News:

[Urinary] Urgency was the most common problem, reported by 15% of veterans and 8% of civilians. The rates of stress and mixed incontinence were 4% and 2%, respectively.

Moderate to severe symptoms also were more common among the veterans (19% vs. 3%), whereas 1% of each group reported severe incontinence.

However, Dr. Markland said, when the group was broken down by age, the youngest group was driving the difference. Men aged 55 years and younger were three times more likely to report any urinary incontinence than were the nonmilitary population. The difference remained significant even after investigators controlled for ethnicity, socioeconomic level, body mass index, diabetes, and heart disease.

Dr. Markland is an internal medicine doctor at the Birmingham, Ala. VA Medical Center.   She says that, "there’s no way to tease out any cause and effect information."