Fifteen years ago (mid noughties), Mr Arun Sahai received funding from The Urology Foundation to look at the possibility of using Botox to treat patients with Overactive Bladder (OAB). He ran the world’s first ever level 1 double blind placebo controlled trial of Botox as a treatment for idiopathic OAB.
Overactive Bladder (OAB) affects 1 in 8 people, which is more people than diabetes, asthma, and osteoporosis and, although it can ruin a life, it’s rarely spoken about and few people have heard of it.
If a person has OAB, they cannot hold their bladder. It means that they could find themselves rushing to the toilet at any moment of the day.
The fear of not being able to find the toilet in time leaves some patients housebound, whilst for others it has a dramatic impact on work and family life. OAB can completely dominate a life.
Mr Arun Sahai is TUF researcher who used TUF’s funding to show that Botox, one of the most deadly poisons on the planet, can be used to effectively treat OAB.
For those patients who don’t respond to drug treatments, complex surgery was the only to treat OAB. But, thanks in part to Arun’s research, Botox injections are now used across the world to give patient’s control of their bladder again.
