Editor's Choice Academic Journal Main Category: Urology / Nephrology Article Date: 28 Feb 2012 - 9:00 PST

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Interstitial cystitis or bladder pain syndrome is a debilitating urinary bladder disease that can occur with or without bladder ulcers - called Hunner lesions. Researching the disease is difficult, due to limited animal models, because human patients are not ethically permitted to undergo invasive research procedures.

The researchers set out to develop a noninvasive method to evaluate the bladder epithelium as objectively and directly as possible by using microarray technology to examine cells shed into the urine. The alternative would be conducting a bladder biopsy, which requires anesthesia and has a small risk of injuring the bladder.

The findings demonstrated that urine cells, from patients with Hunner lesions had a distinct gene signature for inflammation. The findings were comparable to those from an earlier microarray study of bladder biopsies, which was the first to objectively demonstrate this inflammation without biopsy in Hunner lesion patients.

Eric Blalock, associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Biomedical Pharmacology at the UK College of Medicine, says that providing these preliminary results validate future research, they could potentially lead to a noninvasive biomarker for Hunner lesion-interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome.

He states:

Gene signatures were similar to healthy controls in interstitial cystitis patients without Hunner lesions.

Urologist Deborah Erickson declared:

Excerpt from:
Bladder Pain Syndrome - Gene Expression Analysis Shows Promise