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Chronic Bedwetting Associated With Reduced Cognitive Performance
By Jill Stein
HONG KONG (Reuters Health) Dec 04 - Children with primary nocturnal enuresis (PNE) score worse on multiple measures of cognitive performance than do non-bedwetting children, researchers reported here at the International Children's Continence Society (ICCS) meeting.
Dr. Chung Kwong Yeung, chairman of paediatric surgery and paediatric urology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and colleagues tracked changes in cognitive function in 95 children with PNE and 46 age-matched children without PNE over a 2-year period using several widely validated cognitive tests.
\"rior research had shown that bedwetting children have inferior sleep quality including sleep fragmentation and sleep deprivation, but paradoxically have more difficulty in completely awakening,\" Dr. Yeung, who is also ICCS President, pointed out. \"Since sleep deprivation may have a negative impact on daytime cognitive functioning, it is important to examine whether there is an underlying connection between nocturnal enuresis and cognitive performance.\"
No studies have systematically compared cognition in enuretic and non-enuretic children or assessed cognitive changes after treatment for bedwetting, he added.
Patients in the enuretic group had a mean of five bedwetting episodes per week.
Results showed that enuretic children had poorer scores than the control group on standardized tests of intelligence, focused attention, and short-term memory.
Chronic bedwetters also had worse retention ability and long-term memory and a lower learning speed and reaction.
Six months of treatment with desmopressin plus bladder re-training significantly improved all measures of cognitive function. Sleep-awakening ability and brainstem function, which has also been shown to be impaired in children with PNE, were also restored to normal after treatment.
\"The findings are important because treatment of bedwetting should help patients achieve more than getting over the stigma of being wet,\" Dr. Stuart Bauer, professor of urology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, told Reuters Health. \"We now know that treatment can improve cognition and can therefore be expected to improve their school performance, self-image, and their interactions with peers and family members.\"
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/566903 |
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