Vaginal oestrogens for preventing recurrent urinary tract infection in postmenopausal women

Vaginal oestrogens may be effective for reducing recurrent urinary tract infections compared to placebo in postmenopausal women.

A Cochrane review included 9 studies with a total of 3345 women. Vaginal oestrogens vs placebo reduced the number of women with UTIs in two small studies. The RR for one was 0.25 (95% CI 0.13 to 0.50, n=93, topical vaginal cream) and 0.64 (95% CI 0.47 to 0.86, n=108, oestrogen releasing ring) in the second. Two studies compared oral antibiotics vs vaginal oestrogens (cream or pessaries), though there was very significant heterogeneity. Vaginal cream reduced the proportion of UTIs compared to antibiotics in one study and in the second study antibiotics were superior to vaginal pessaries. Adverse events were vaginal bleeding or nonphysiologic discharge for the ring and vaginal irritation, burning and itching for the cream.

Comment: The quality of evidence is downgraded by study quality (unclear allocation concealment) and by imprecise results (limited study size for each comparison).

The following decision support rules contain links to this evidence summary:

• Local rather than oral estrogens for recurrent urinary tract infection in postmenopausal women

Ədəbiyyat

1. Perrotta C, Aznar M, Mejia R, Albert X, Ng CW. Oestrogens for preventing recurrent urinary tract infection in postmenopausal women. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2008 Apr 16;(2):CD005131 (Last assessed as up-to-date: 30 January 2008).