Effects of Conservative Management on Relieving Storage Urinary Symptoms and Poor Sleep in Women With Diabetes

Women with type 2 diabetes (n=90) experiencing ≥1 storage lower urinary tract symptoms and poor sleep health will be recruited from the outpatient departments or wards/units of the selected hospitals/clinics. Our study aims to examine the effects of conservative management incorporating urologic health promotion and sleep health promotion on relieving storage lower urinary tract symptoms and poor sleep, and on improving urologic health self-management behaviors and health-related quality of life. Women who agree to participate will be randomly assigned into the intervention group A, intervention group B, or comparison group. The intervention group A receives a 4-month conservative management with sleep hygiene related adjustments, pelvic floor muscle training, and urologic health promotion. The intervention group B receives a 4-month conservative management with brief behavioral treatment for insomnia (BBTI), pelvic floor muscle training, and urologic health promotion. The comparison group receives information related to pelvic floor muscle training and urologic health promotion, and receives a brief conservative management related to sleep hygiene adjustments after the completion of data collection. Information related to intervention effects is obtained by a questionnaire, a wristwatch-like actigraphy, and physical activity/diet/voiding/sleep logs from all participants at 4 data collection points: baseline, and 2-, 4-, 6-month follow-ups. Our study hypothesis is that the intervention effects on relieving storage lower urinary tract symptoms and poor sleep, and on improving urologic health self-management behaviors and health-related quality of life in the intervention group A or B are superior to the changes revealed in the comparison group. The effects of the provided intervention on storage lower urinary tract symptoms, sleep quality, urologic health self-management behaviors, and health-related quality of life will be examined by Generalized Estimating Equations procedures with the estimations of effect sizes. Results of Chi-squared tests and descriptive statistics will also be used to present the intervention effects.