Women who drink more water get fewer urinary tract infections

(Reuters Health) – Women who drink more water to avoid urinary tract infections can have problems. A new experiment offers new evidence that drinking more water each day can reduce the frequency of urinary tract infections.

For the study, the researchers focused on 140 women with recurrent urinary tract infections who drank an average of less than 1.5 liters of fluid (about six 8-ounce glasses) a day. For 12 months, the researchers asked half of these women to continue drinking normally and the other half to drink an extra 1.5 liters of water a day.

During the year, the experiment revealed that women consuming more water had an average of 1.7 UTI, compared to an average of 3.2 for women who did not bring additional water to their diet. .

"The data strongly suggests that the hydration status is associated with the risk of urinary tract infection," said Dr. Thomas M. Hooton, lead author of the study, from the Miller School of Medicine. University of Miami.

"If a woman has recurrent urinary tract infections, she should take into account her daily fluid intake and try to increase it to at least two to three liters a day," Hooton said via e-mail.

About half of women will experience at least one urinary tract infection at any given time, the researchers note in JAMA Internal Medicine. Once women have this first UTI, 27% of them will have another within six months and another 44 to 70% will have another within a year.

Women have long been advised that staying hydrated can help minimize the risk of these infections. But until now, researchers had no conclusive evidence that drinking more water could prevent urinary tract infections, noted the study's authors.

The women in this study were generally in good health, but they had at least three urinary tract infections the previous year, including at least one confirmed infection by a clinician using urine tests. All participants also reported drinking less than 1.5 liters of fluid per day.

Among women assigned to increase their water intake, participants drank an average of 1.7 liters more fluid per day at the end of the study compared to the beginning. Women in the control group who had not been asked to increase their water intake did not experience a significant change in fluid intake during the study.

One of the limitations of the study is that it was performed in one place, which allows the results to be different for patients from other countries, the authors note.

The results for these women at high risk of recurrence of urinary tract infections may also differ from those of women at lower risk for urinary tract infection, "said Dr. Deborah Grady, author of a leading editorial. accompaniment and professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. .

It's also hard to give women the exact amount of water to consume to prevent urinary tract infections, Grady said via email.

"The theory is that drinking more water results in greater urine production, which eliminates bacteria in the bladder and prevents infection," Grady said. "More water is usually not harmful, but it may be necessary to urinate frequently and have to get up at night to urinate."

SOURCE: JAMA Internal Medicine bit.ly/2Nhb6xg, posted October 1, 2018.