Assessment of long-term intravesical hyaluronic acid, chondroitin sulfate and combination therapy for patients with bladder pain syndrome

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy, safety and tolerability of intravesical hyaluronic acid (HA), chondroitin sulfate (CS) and combination therapies (HA+CS) for patients with bladder pain syndrome (BPS) – interstitial cystitis (IC) during a 24 months follow-up period. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study was conducted with a prospective, randomized and double-blinded design. A total of 72 patients were divided into three groups as HA, CS and combination group. Outpatient visits were performed at the begining of the study and at every 3(rd) month thereafter. Both objective parameters included in 3 day micturition diary such as number of micturitions per 24 hours, volume voided in each micturition and self-reported questionnaires such as Patient Perception of Bladder Condition Scale, Visual Analog Scale, Pain Urgency Frequency Questionnaire, Interstitial Cystitis Symptom and Problem Index, Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) were used to assess the efficacy of three different agents. Safety was defined as any adverse event beginning or worsening in the study and reported in each visit. RESULTS: All groups showed a significant improvement both in the parameters included in the 3 day micturition diary and self-reported questionnaires compared to the baseline values or scores recorded at the beginning of the study. Our primary end point was improvement in HRQoL score. The combination therapy was superior to both of the monotherapies in terms of improvement in HRQoL score and the difference was statistically significant (p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Combination therapy provides better results than the monotherapies to obtain symptomatic relief in patients with BPS/IC. Meta-analysis of different well-designed studies are required for more definitive results.