NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Black women are less likely than white women to suffer bladder-control problems, but when they do, the condition tends to be worse, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among more than 2,800 women ages 35 to 64, urinary incontinence was about half as common among black women as it was white women.

However, black women did tend to have worse symptoms, reporting greater amounts of urine leakage, on average. According to the researchers, this likely had to do with their higher rate of urge incontinence, a form of the condition where people feel an overwhelming need to urinate, often before they can reach a bathroom.

In contrast, white women more often had stress incontinence, where a person leaks small amounts of urine when the bladder is under pressure -- from exercise, coughing or laughing, for example.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Urology, show that while bladder-control problems are generally less common in black women, they are nonetheless significant.

"This is a population that may have been neglected because it was believed for so long that black women did not have stress urinary incontinence," lead researcher Dr. Dee E. Fenner, of the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, said in a statement.

"In truth," she added, "black women suffer from the social embarrassment of urinary incontinence, and the medical community needs to remember this when diagnosing and treating all women."

The study included 1,922 African-American women and 892 white women from three Michigan counties who were surveyed over the phone. Overall, 27 percent reported symptoms of urinary incontinence; that included 33 percent of white women and 15 percent of black women.

However, twice as many black women as white women reported symptoms of urge incontinence.

Fenner's team found no evidence that risk factors for urinary incontinence differed by race. Obesity, constipation, depression and impaired mobility were all linked to a higher risk of urinary incontinence in white and black women.

Since "any individual woman, black or white," can have any type of urinary incontinence, the researchers conclude, doctors should not consider race as a factor when trying to diagnose and treat bladder-control problems.

SOURCE: Journal of Urology, April 2008.

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