Sleeping It Off: Another Possible Benefit of Medically Managing Urinary Incontinence

Poor-quality sleep and urgency urinary incontinence (UUI) are common complaints in postmenopausal women. To test whether pharmacologic therapy with an antimuscarinic agent to manage UUI also improves sleep quality, investigators conducted a planned secondary analysis of a manufacturer-sponsored 12-week trial of fesoterodine to reduce urgency urinary incontinence. In all, 645 community-dwelling women (mean age, 56; 79% in self-reported excellent health) were randomized to fesoterodine or placebo.

While both groups experienced reductions from baseline in incontinence, women who received fesoterodine had statistically significantly greater reductions in total and urgency incontinence as well as number of nocturnal voids. Measures of sleep quali…