Interstitial cystitis is a sterile bladder disease occurring mostly in women that is characterized by bladder/pelvic pain as well as urgency and frequency of urination in the absence of urinary tract infection.1 The prevalence of IC was recently estimated to be as high as 464 to 575/100,000 women.2,3 While symptoms can be quite debilitating, there is no curative treatment currently available.4,5 A number of immunomodulators have been proposed or studied6 because many patients with IC have bladder inflammation but the results are still not impressive.4,7 There have been repeated reports of an increased number of activated mast cells in the bladder of patients with IC,8 which is the only pathological finding shown to correlate with dry symptoms, specifically nocturia.9 NCS particles were recently investigated in many inflammatory processes. NCS (1%) cream significantly decreased swelling and inflammation, including TNF- gene expression, in an experimental animal model of dermatitis.10 NCS (1%) was also shown to promote wound healing.11 Currently NCS is clinically available as an impregnated wound dressing that is used commonly in patients with burns. We examined the effect of intravesical NCS in an established animal model12,13 of bladder inflammation using P and bacterial LPS to investigate it as a potential treatment for IC.
