Papers of the Week

Interstitial Cystitis (IC) is a chronic condition diagnosed based on the presence of symptoms, such as suprapubic/ pelvic pain, pressure or discomfort in association with urgency and increased urinary frequency. Confusable diseases must be excluded. However, there is no objective test or marker to establish the presence of the disease. Diagnosis and patient management is often difficult, given the poor understanding of IC pathogenesis and its unknown etiology and genetics. As an attempt to find biomarkers related to IC, we assessed the association between 20 selected single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) with IC and pain severity.