It is also called stress urinary incontinence. One of the causes of leakage of urine that occurs during a sudden physical effort is stress – explains Dr. Rodolfo Hurle, urologist at Humanitas. – In fact, during stressful periods, testosterone, which is the male sex hormone also present in women, tends to decrease. As its role is to maintain muscle tone in the pelvic floor, its decrease could affect the tone of the urethra muscular sphincter, causing urine leakage during sudden physical exertion. This type of urinary incontinence is different from the incontinence due to “urgency”, when the bladder muscle contracts independently from the effort that the woman makes to retain the urine and, generating a higher pressure than the one present in the urethra, it causes urine leakage. Even though the testosterone treatment in stress urinary incontinence in women requires an assessment of pros and cons by the specialist for each individual case, duloxetine is, instead, one of the molecules currently used to treat this problem in female patients.
