Ohio institutions get $3.7 million for painful bladder disorder study

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A collection of Ohio hospitals and research institutions will use a $3.7 million National Institutes of Health grant to examine whether the nervous system — and not the bladder — causes painful bladder syndrome.

Researchers have over the past decade seen a connection between the nervous system and painful bladder syndrome, known as interstitial cystitis. Often, patients with the syndrome will either have or have a family member with another autonomic disorder. Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has received the grant and will coordinate the five-year study with researchers from Cleveland’s University Hospitals, Ohio State University, Cleveland Clinic and Summa Health System.

The researchers will measure autonomic function and sensation in syndrome patients when they’re resting and under stress, and compare them to other patients. The hope is this research will lead to new treatments.

Painful bladder syndrome “may actually be a member of a larger family of disorders that share a family predisposition for abnormal central autonomic and sensory responses to stress, pain or threat, usually first appearing following a traumatic event such as infection and injury,” said Dr. Thomas Chelimsky, neurology professor at CWRU and director of autonomic disorders at University Hospitals Case Medical Center and the University Hospitals Neurological Institute. He is the principal investigator in the project.