Family history link to bed-wetting

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 9

Family history link to bed-wetting

NZPA-AP Chicago A family history of bladder-control problems is more likely to cause youngsters to wet the bed than emotional troubles such as family stress, a new study in New Zealand has found. “Our results show that the reason children wet the bed is not because they’re naughty or under stress but because they are children who are predisposed biologically to have this problem,” said Mr David Fergusson, lead researcher for the study conducted at Christchurch Clinical School of Medicine, New Zealand. * In an eight-year study of 1092 New Zealand children, the researchers found that more than half stopped wetting their beds by the age of three, Mr Fergusson said.

The findings were released at the week-end and printed in the November issue of “Pediatrics,” the journal of the Ameri-

can Academy of Pediatrics, based in suburban Elk Grove village. Researchers found that a family history of bedwetting is the best predictor of whether a child will be late in developing night-time bladder control.

The study indicated that children who have two close relatives, such as parents, with a history of bed-wetting take 1 y 2 years longer to develop bladder control. The researchers also found that children who were slower to develop physically, slept for longer periods during infancy and started toilet training after 18 months old were also slower to stop wetting the bed. In addition, the study found that boys were slightly slower to develop bladder control than girls. Mr Fergusson said the researchers had decided to study bed-wetting because of continuing de-

bate over its cause. There are two theories available. One is that it is a part of a maturation that children grow in and out of, that bed-wetting is a biological problem. The competing theory assumes that bed-wetting is a response to psychosocial problems such as stresses in the family such as a separation of parents, he said.

The results strongly suggest that psychosocial factors are not important, he said.

All but 3.3 per cent of the children had learned to control their bladders by the age of eight. But taking into account relapses, 7.4 per cent of the children studied had the problem at eight years old, the study said. Mr Fergusson said the study did not examine what caused the relapses. Some psychiatrists have speculated social factors cause such relapses, he said.

The study was part of a much larger child-de-velopment research project begun in 1977. He said Christchurch researchers were studying more than 1000 children born in 1977.

If funding holds out, Mr Fergusson said, he hopes to follow the children through to their eighteenth birthdays.