Advertisement

Association between male lower urinary tract symptoms and the imbalance of autonomic activity

Login to Access Video or Poster Abstract: MP13-03
Sources of Funding: none

Introduction

Some previous studies suggested that the associations between lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and autonomic nervous function. The heart rate variability (HRV) is a noninvasive tool for measuring autonomic nervous activity and low frequency / high frequency (LF/HF) ratio is known to be a marker that mirrors the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous activities. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the changes of autonomic functions according to the LUTS treatment.

Methods

108 male volunteers with LUTS defined as International prostate symptom score over 8 were screened. Electrocardiographic signals were obtained from subjects in resting state for the analysis of their HRV. HRV parameters were analyzed to evaluate autonomic functions. We divided them into two groups by LF/HF ratio 1.6 after initial measurement. After the administration of alfuzosin 10mg once a day for 12 weeks, we evaluated HRV to investigate changes of autonomic functions.

Results

Total 95 LUTS patients who completed this study were enrolled. 54 subjects with LF/HF ratio under or equal 1.6 were allocated to group A and 41 patients with LF/HF ratio over 1.6 were allocated to group B. There were no statistical differences in serum PSA, volume of prostate, maximal urine flow rate between two groups. There was no statistical difference in improvement of peak urine flow rate, IPSS after treatment with alfuzosin 10mg for 12 weeks. The average LF/HF ratio of group A was increased from 0.89 ± 0.40 to 1.79 ± 1.80, however it was decreased from 3.93 ± 5.47 to 1.79 ± 1.15 in group B.

Conclusions

LF/HF ratios of both groups were merged to similar values after treatments of male LUTS in this study. This study suggests that the imbalance of autonomic activity may be associated with LUTS and the efficacy of LUTS treatment.

Funding

none

Authors
Seol Ho Choo
Se Joong Kim
Jong Bo Choi
Sun Il Kim
Hyun Soo Ahn
Taewoo Kim
back to top