Are stress and mixed urinary incontinence associated with impaired executive control in community-dwelling older women?

OBJECTIVES: To assess whether stress or mixed urinary incontinence (UI) is associated with deficits in executive functioning among community-dwelling women.

DESIGN: An observational study comparing the performance, using multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) and Bonferroni post hoc test, of continent women and women with stress or mixed UI during executive control tasks.

SETTING: The research center of the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal.

PARTICIPANTS: One hundred and fifty-five community-dwelling women aged 60 and older participated in the study.

MEASUREMENTS: Based on the Urogenital Distress Inventory (UDI), participants were split into three groups: 35 continent women, 43 women with stress UI, and 78 women with mixed UI. Participants completed a battery of neuropsychological tests and a computerized dual-task test.

RESULTS: Women with mixed UI showed poorer performances than continent and stress UI women in executive control functions. Deficits were specific to tests involving switching and sharing/dividing attention between two tasks.

CONCLUSION: Results of this study suggest that mixed UI can be associated with executive control deficits in community-dwelling older women. Future intervention studies in the treatment of UI should take the higher risk of an executive control deficit in women with UI under consideration.