Cold feet and urinary tract infections

[Guest guest]

Awaiting an appointment with a consultant urologist because of recurrent

UTIs I have been looking at all available literature on the subject.

I was astounded to come across a nine year old paper which seems to suggest

that cold feet may be a likely cause!. I have noticed that exposure to cold

generally seems to bring them on but I'm not sure how much I can accept this

idea. I reproduce the summary:-

Symptomatic lower urinary tract infection induced by cooling of the feet. An

experimental study. By Anders Baerheim and Even Laerum. Scand J Prim Health

Care 1992; 10: 157-60.

We conducted an open, non-randomized study as the first step to find out

whether cooling of the feet may cause symptomatic lower urinary tract

infection (UTI) in cystitis-prone women. Twenty-nine healthy women, aged

19-68 (mean 42.5) years, who had had three or more symptomatic episodes of

UTI last 12 months were included. They registered symptoms and carried out a

strip urinalysis at each urination during a control period of 72 hours.

Their legs were then immersed in increasingly cold water for 30 minutes.

Another 72 hour period of registration followed. Six subjects developed

acute lower urinary symptoms at a mean of 55 (05% confidence interval 50 to

61) hours after the cooling, compared to none in the control period. Five of

the six had bacteriologically verified lower UTI (P=0.03 v. the control

period). Cooling of the feet seems to provoke symptomatic lower UTI in

cystitis-prone women. .

Pat Newton.

Littlehampton UK