Statin Use Is Associated with Bladder Pain Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis: A Population-Based Case-Control Study

Statin may induce epithelial dysfunction of the bladder urothelium. Epithelial dysfunction was proposed as one of the major potential etiologies for bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis (BPS/IC). In this study, we examined the association between statin use and BPS/IC using a population-based study.

This case-control study used the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database. In total, 815 female subjects with BPS/IC and 4075 randomly selected female controls were included. We used a conditional logistic regression to compute the odds ratio (OR) for having previously used statins between cases and controls.

A conditional logistic regression analysis showed that the OR of prior statin users for cases was 1.52 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.19-1.94) compared to controls after adjusting for diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, obesity, chronic pelvic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, panic disorder, migraines, sicca syndrome, allergies, endometriosis, and asthma. Furthermore, adjusted ORs of regular and irregular statin use for cases were 1.58 (95% CI: 1.20-2.08) and 1.53 (95% CI: 1.02-2.31), respectively, compared to controls.

We concluded that there was an association between statin use and BPS/IC.