Relationship Between Blood Glucose and Hemoglobin A1c Levels and Urinary Incontinence in Women

Ning Liu; Li Xing; Weipu Mao; Shuqiu Chen; Jianping Wu; Bin Xu; Ming Chen

doi:10.2147/IJGM.S324332

Relationship Between Blood Glucose and Hemoglobin A1c Levels and Urinary Incontinence in Women

Int J Gen Med. 2021 Jul 31:14:4105-4116. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S324332. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Ning Liu¹, Li Xing¹, Weipu Mao^{1

2

3}, Shuqiu Chen¹, Jianping Wu¹, Bin Xu¹, Ming Chen^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Urology, Affiliated Zhongda Hospital of Southeast University, Nanjing, 210009, People's Republic of China.
² Surgical Research Center, Institute of Urology, Southeast University Medical School, Nanjing, 210009, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Urology, Nanjing Lishui District People's Hospital, Zhongda Hospital Lishui Branches, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211200, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the associations between blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels with the degree of stress urinary incontinence (SUI) and urgency urinary incontinence (UUI) in women.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of female participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database between 2007 and 2012. Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to assess the relationship between blood glucose and HbA1c levels and the degree of SUI and UUI.

Results: A total of 3821 participants were enrolled in the study, of whom 2421 (63.4%) had no SUI, 1133 (29.7%) had monthly SUI, 267 (7.0%) had weekly SUI; 2883 (75.5%) had no UUI, 735 (19.2%) had monthly UUI, 203 (5.3%) had weekly UUI. The levels of blood glucose and HbA1c were positively correlated with SUI and UUI, and increased with increasing degree of UUI. Multivariate logistic regression showed that there was a positive association between blood HbA1c level and degree of SUI.

Conclusion: Our study found that blood glucose and HbA1c levels can be used as indicators of SUI and UUI severity in women.

Keywords: blood glucose; hemoglobin A1c; national health and nutrition examination survey; stress urinary incontinence; urgency urinary incontinence.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81572517 to Bin Xu, 82070773 to Shuqiu Chen), the Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School of Southeast University (YBPY2173 to Weipu Mao), Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX21_0156), Jiangsu Provincial Key Research and Development Program (BE2019751 to Ming Chen), Innovative Team of Jiangsu Provincial (2017XKJQW07 to Ming Chen), and The National Key Research and Development Program of China (SQ2017YFSF090096 to Ming Chen).