Purpose: Lower urinary tract symptoms are prevalent and burdensome, yet methods to enhance diagnosis and appropriately guide therapies are lacking. We systematically reviewed the literature for human studies of biomarkers associated with lower urinary tract symptoms. Materials and Methods: PubMedÒ, EMBASEÒ and Web of ScienceÒ were searched from inception to February 13, 2018. Articles were included if they were in English, performed in benign urological populations without neurological disorders or interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome, and assessed a biomarker's association with or ability to predict specific lower urinary tract symptoms or urological conditions. Bioinformatic pathway analyses were conducted to determine whether individual biomarkers associated with symptoms are present in unifying pathways. Results: Of 6,150 citations identified 125 met the inclusion criteria. Most studies (93.6%) assessed biomarkers at 1 time point and were crosssectional in nature. Few studies adjusted for potentially confounding clinical variables or assessed biomarkers in an individual over time. No individual biomarkers are currently validated as diagnostic tools for lower urinary tract symptoms. Compared to controls, pathway analyses identified multiple immune response pathways that were enriched in overactive bladder
The number of comparative studies evaluating POP surgical outcomes has increased from 1996 to 2016. Most use definitions of success based solely on anatomic criteria despite increasing awareness of the importance of reporting subjective outcomes and retreatment rates.
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