Causes of cystitis

Definition

Urinary Tract Infection or UTI is also known as cystitisis. Symptoms of cystitisis are frequent urinating, followed with sting sensation of the pain and burning. Urine is cloudy, discolored and smelly. If untreated, cystitisis infection may cause kidney pain and high fever, and it must be treated immediately.

Bladder cystitis, Painful bladder syndrome, or IC, are all alternate names of interstitial cystitis. This is a chronic condition of inflamed or irritated bladder wall, and can produce many problems in patients, like pain in the pelvic and bladder areas that surrounds it.

If untreated in time, this condition may lead to serious disabling problems, like stiffening and scaring of the bladder ulcers (called Hunner’s), smaller bladder capacity, meaning bladder is less capable to hold bigger amounts of urine and bleeding in the bladder.

Most of the time, cystitis is caused by bacteria Escherichia coli, which can be found in genital area. Because lately Escherichia coli have become resistant to most usual anti biotic, this can be the reason of difficulty in treating UTI in women.

Causes of cystitis

There are usually two main types of cystitis bacterial infections;

Hospital acquired or nosocomial bladder infections, which happens in the nursing homes or hospitals, and are often consequence of urinary catheter placed through urethra into the bladder, which is very common in pre operative preparations.Community acquired bladder infections, which occurs outside of the hospitals, and can have several causes, from sexual contact to some other body organ infection that has spread to some parts of the urinary tract. Also following condition, like prostate enlargements can elevate risk of cystitis.

There are also causes of cystitis that are not related to bacterial infection origins, but are the product of some other factors that may cause bladder inflammation. Some of them are cystitis that occurs as consequence of some other disorder in the body, like lupus, Crohn’s disease, pelvic inflammations, gynecologic cancers, tuberculosis or endometriosis.

Also there are cases of radiation cystitis, which occurs when radiation treatment of pelvic area cause inflammation of the bladder.

Drug induced cystitis occurs in cases when certain types of medications, especially chemotherapy drugs are prescribed, and the process they cause bladder inflammation as they leave the body thru urine.

Another case of noninfectious cystitis is chemical cystitis. It occurs in cases of patient’s hypersensitivity to certain chemicals which some products contain, like bubble baths or spermicidal jellies. In those cases inflammation is consequence of allergic reaction.