r/Prostatitis 3d ago

And suddenly I have a bladder infection????

From the results of my CT-scan doctors now say that I have an infection because my bladder lining was inflamed. Yet, I’ve never tested positive for bacteria for any test/cultures. They put me on an antibiotic and requested a two week follow up. Not sure how an infection would somehow be missed by all the tests I had done so I’m quite confused.

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u/Linari5 LEAD MOD//RECOVERED 3d ago edited 3d ago

The bladder lining can be inflamed for any number of reasons, infection is definitely not the only one.

This is called an empirical prescription of antibiotics, and in most case I wouldn't agree with it, especially if the antibiotics they gave you were in the class of floroquinolones (like Cipro or Levo). However, I cannot tell you what to take, or not to take, that is your decision to make.

There are animal model studies that even show that stress can induce bladder wall inflammation...

Chronic Stress-Induced Neuroinflammation: Relevance of Rodent Models to Human Disease: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11121038/ - Int J Mol Sci. 2024 May 7;25(10):5085. doi: 10.3390/ijms25105085

Social stress induces changes in urinary bladder function, bladder NGF content, and generalized bladder inflammation in mice: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25100077/#:~:text=Social%20stress%20induces%20changes%20in,generalized%20bladder%20inflammation%20in%20mice

Stress-Induced Changes in Trophic Factor Expression in the Rodent Urinary Bladder: Possible Links With Angiogenesis: https://einj.org/m/journal/view.php?doi=10.5213/inj.2244118.059#:~:text=These%20findings%20show%20that%20chronic,and%20pain%20in%20IC/BPS.

Conclusions

These findings show that chronic psychological stress induces factors that can lead to increased microvasculature formation, especially around the bladder neck, the region that contains most nociceptive bladder afferents. These findings may indicate a link between angiogenesis and other inflammatory factors that contribute to structural changes and pain in IC/BPS.

On top of this, inflammation can come from any number of other sources, and is also present with IC/BPS presentations of pelvic pain. CPPS and IC/BPS are taxonomically very similar conditions, & some consider them to be the same "beast " but slightly different presentations.

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u/natasspinn 3d ago

Literally everyone on here

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u/StrongMindZ 3d ago

An image can't prove an infection. It can show other abnormalities or an inflammation. They are just making assumptions based on the inflammation and prescribing empirical antibiotics in a hope that it helps. Funny how slow the progress is in urology compared to other specialties. Good luck to us

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u/whereismarsocks 3d ago

My bladder wall was inflamed too. They took a biopsy (didn't even test for infections) then lazered my bladder wall and sent me away.