Nocturia, or the need to wake up to urinate at night, is the second common cause of sleep loss. It affects more than 50 per cent of both men and women over the age of 50, waking them up at least once during the night and preventing a restful night’s sleep. Latest figures show that nearly 40 millions adults in Europe regularly have their sleep broken by a need to pass urine. This does not only cause day-time tiredness but can also lead to health and psychological problems.
Importance of sleep
Sleep serves many vital functions such as conservation of energy, rehabilitation, repair and metabolism, but more significantly, cognitive function. It has also been related to life expectancy
It is not the overall length of sleep that matters, but an adequate length of uninterrupted sleep. Five or six hours of undisturbed sleep are far more beneficial than ten hours of disturbed sleep.
The most important and deepest form of sleep occurs early on in the night, generally during the first three to four hours. Being woken during this phase of sleeping has the biggest impact on the daytime performance of an individual.
Nocturia - a medical condition
Nocturia has only recently begun to be recognised as a medical condition in its own right rather than a symptom of some other disorder. It is usually caused by an imbalance between night-time urine production and bladder capacity. Research suggests that an overproduction of urine is the cause in up to 75 per cent of all cases of nocturia.
The body's natural way to regulate the amount of urine produced is by releasing an antidiuretic hormone, called vasopressin. At night, vasopressin levels should increase to reduce the volume of urine produced to about a third of the total daily output. The reduced amount of urine produced at night should limit the need to empty the bladder during sleep. However, in many cases of nocturia the average volume of urine produced during the night is greater than the amount the bladder can hold.
Treating nocturia
Nocturia can be treated by reducing the volume of urine produced while a person sleeps. Ferring has a unique product that works in a similar way to the body's own physiological system for concentrating urine, thus reducing the volume produced.
MINIRIN (desmopressin) is the first treatment specifically licensed for nocturia. It is a peptide-based synthetic analogue of the human antidiurectic hormone, vasopressin. It mimics the action of vasopressin in the kindeys to increase the reabsorption of water thereby reducing the volume of urine produced. MINIRIN is fast acting and the duration of action spans the duration of a night.
When taken before bedtime MINIRIN increases the mean duration of sleep by at least two hours by reducing the need to urinate during the night. More than 30 per cent of patients using MINIRIN experience an undisturbed sound first period of sleep of over five hours.