A Study of the Effect of Antibiotics on the Microbiology of the Bladder in Patients With Overactive Bladder

The concept of organisms living on or in the human body without causing overt signs of an infection is common in medicine and has been termed a microbiome. Urine from patients with Overactive bladder (OAB) grows different organisms from controls without OAB. However, it is not known if the bacteria that have been identified are innocent commensals or pathogenic organism responsible for the symptoms of OAB. Previous data suggests that treatment with antibiotics does lead to an improvement in overactive bladder symptoms in a large number of patients. On this basis the investigators now treat are patients with similar antibiotic regimes. If antibiotics improve symptoms it would be expected that they would return the microbiome back to how it is in patients without OAB. This study aims to identify the effects of antibiotics on the urinary microbiome and to identify/confirm if antibiotic treatments cause improvement in OAB.