Pollen count rise triggers urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome flares

Rising pollen count appears to trigger flares of urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome, suggests a study.

The authors examined flare status every 2 weeks for 1 year as part of the Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Chronic Pelvic Pain case-crossover analysis of flare triggers. They investigated flare symptoms, flare start date, and exposures in the 3 days before a flare for the first three episodes and at three randomly selected nonflare incidents.

Data were linked to daily pollen count by date and the first three digits of the participants’ zip codes. Then, the authors compared pollen count in the 3 days before and day of a flare, as well as pollen rises past established thresholds, to nonflare values by conditional logistic regression.

The authors estimated flare rates in the 3 weeks following pollen rises past established thresholds in the full longitudinal study using Poisson regression. They also analysed all participants and separately in those who reported allergies or respiratory tract disorders.

No associations were noted for daily pollen count and flare onset. However, there were positive associations seen for pollen count rises past medium or higher thresholds in participants with allergies or respiratory tract disorders in the case-crossover (odds ratio, 1.31, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.04–1.66) and full longitudinal (relative risk, 1.23, 95 percent CI, 1.03–1.46) samples.

“If confirmed in future studies, these findings may help to inform flare pathophysiology, prevention and treatment, and control over the unpredictability of flares,” the authors said.