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Chung SD, Chang CH, Hung PH, Chung CJ, Muo CH, Huang CY. Correlation Between Bladder Pain Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis and Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. Medicine (Baltimore). 2015 Nov;94(46):e1878. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000001878.

Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is a gynecologic disorder that, much like interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS), is associated with acute abdominal pain and chronic inflammation. Despite this similarity, there have been no studies looking at potential associations between the two conditions. Accordingly, investigators looked for cases of PID in a database of patients in Taiwan. The sample included 449 patients with IC/BPS, and for comparison, 1796 randomly selected control subjects. The investigators found that the IC/BPS patients were significantly more likely to also have PID; in all, nearly 42% of the IC/BPS patients had PID, versus just about 15% of the control subjects. That finding suggests that the risk of PID is significantly higher in women with IC/BPS, or at least the Asian women in this study. The investigators aren’t sure why women with IC/BPS would have such a high prevalence of PID, so further study may be needed to confirm the findings and look at the underlying causes.