TOPLINE

About 70% of children with overactive bladder who responded to 12 weeks of home-based transcutaneous tibial nerve stimulation (TTNS) maintained their response 6 months after stopping treatment.

METHODOLOGY

• Researchers conducted a prospective cohort study to assess the duration of benefits after 12 weeks of home-based TTNS in children with idiopathic overactive bladder.
• They enrolled 146 children aged 6-15 years at a Chinese hospital between March and September 2025. All received the intervention plus standard urotherapy.
• The final analysis included 97 children (mean age, 7.95 years; 47.4% girls) who responded to treatment, defined as a reduction of ≥ 3 points.
• The nerve stimulation treatment was stopped after week 12, and children continued receiving standard urotherapy without taking any additional medications for the condition.
• The primary outcomes were the maintenance of response at week 24 and the visit timing of the first loss of response.

TAKEAWAY

• At week 24, 69.8% of children maintained a response, whereas 34% experienced a loss of response at least once.
• Mean symptom scores decreased from 11.07 at baseline to 5.37 at week 12 and partially rebounded to 6.50 at week 24.
• The first loss of response was noted in 18.6% of children at week 20.

IN PRACTICE

“[The] findings may support planned reassessment 4-8 weeks after TTNS discontinuation and provide hypotheses for controlled studies of maintenance, re-treatment, and follow-up strategies,” the researchers of the study wrote.

SOURCE

The study was led by Fangzheng Cheng of Shandong University in Jinan, China. It was published online on July 30 in the Journal of Pediatric Urology.

LIMITATIONS

Only including week 12 responders limited the generalizability of the results to all children treated with TTNS. Assessment of loss of response only at scheduled visits prevented researchers from determining exactly when the response was lost.

DISCLOSURES

The study received support from the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province. The authors did not report any conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.