Association between urinary incontinence and bone health in Korean elderly women based on data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Abstract

Background: Urinary incontinence and impaired bone health are significant health problems among the elderly. We evaluated the impact of urinary incontinence on bone health in the elderly. Material and Methods: Our study used data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination. We included 901 women aged ≥ 65 years. The bone mineral density was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Impaired bone health was characterized by lumbar spine, femoral neck, or total femur T-scores of ≤ −1.0 SD. Each participant’s incontinence status was recorded using constructed questionnaires. Results: The prevalence of self-reported urinary incontinence in the women aged ≥ 65 years was 9.5%. After adjustments for age, height, and weight, the T-scores for the lumbar spine of the urinary incontinence and the no urinary continence groups were −2.48 ± 0.11 and −2.37 ± 0.03, respectively and didn’t show the difference between them (p = 0.390). Likewise, the T-scores for the total femur and femoral neck were not significantly different. After adjusting for covariates, we found no statistically significant association between impaired bone health with urinary incontinence. Conclusions: This study found urinary incontinence was not an independent risk factor of impaired bone health in the elderly women.