1999 Volume 42 Issue 10 Pages 853-857
Interstitial cystitis (IC) is a chronic syndrome of unknown etiology characterized by irritable voiding symptoms such as urinary frequency and urgency, pain on bladder filling and urination, and pelvic pain. We report two female cases of NIDDM associated with IC. Case 1, 73 years old, had been treated with glibenclamide for 4 years and gradually began to suffer from irritable voiding symptoms, while Case 2, 51 years old, was treated with insulin for 22 years before the symptoms suddenly appeared. Neither case had chronic diabetic complications. Both were diagnosed as IC based on irritable bladder symptoms, sterile urine, submucosal glomerulations during bladder filling, interstitial edema, and mononuclear cell infiltrations of the biopsy specimen of the bladder mucosa, in the absence of other known causes. The symptoms were reduced by medications including steroids in Case 1, but no alleviation was achieved in Case 2, even by intravesical dimethyl sulfoxide treatment and hyperbaric oxygenation therapy, in addition to steroids. The association of IC with diabetes mellitus is controversial in Caucasians, but there are no epidemiological studies of IC in Japanese, which needs to be clarified.
