A pilot study to investigate the associations of urinary concentrations of urinary NO, ATP and derivatives with overactive bladder symptom severity

Overactive bladder (OAB) is a highly prevalent symptom complex characterized by symptoms of urinary urgency; increased frequency; waking to void (nocturia) - with or without urge incontinence and in the absence of proven infection or other obvious pathology. The underlying pathophysiology of idiopathic OAB is not clearly known and the existence of several phenotypes has been proposed. Current diagnostic approaches are based on discordant measures, suffer from subjectivity and are incapable of detecting the proposed OAB phenotypes. NO, ATP and their metabolites have previously been shown to underlie the perception of bladder fullness, with their release modifying the pathological perception of urgency. Therefore, in this study we assessed the concentration of NO, ATP and associated metabolites in the urine of 113 consented participants recruited from the general population.
Recruited participants completed a questionnaire to measure the severity of OAB-associated urinary symptoms and provided a mid-stream urine sample. Following identification of infection and hematuria using microbiology and microscopy, 95 samples were subjected to assays to measure NO, NO2-, NO3-, ATP, ADP and creatinine.
There was no correlation between [NO/Cr], [NO2-/Cr] or [NO3-/Cr] and overall OAB symptom severity. [ATP/NO], [ADP/NO] and a combination of these, [ATP/Cr*ADP/Cr]/[NO/Cr], correlated with OAB symptom severity; with [ATP/Cr*ADP/Cr]/[NO/Cr] also correlating with the severity of urinary frequency and urgency.
This study adds to a growing literature that demonstrates the potential of urinary biomarkers and provides a foundation for a larger, longitudinal study.