Night-time trips to the loo can make you less productive at work, a new study has claimed.
Nocturia - where a person wakes up once or more in a night to urinate - leads to "notable work productivity loss", according to the study presented to the European Association of Urology congress in Milan.
Nocturia reduced work productivity by 24 per cent - greater than the productivity loss shown by people with asthma or lung disease, it was found.
The ability to carry out leisure activities in the day was also reduced, by 34 per cent.
The team of researchers examined 261 women and 385 men with the condition and questioned them about the effect of health problems on their ability to work and perform regular activities, The Telegraph reported.
"Nocturia is a common problem affecting around a third of adults, but its burden is underestimated and it is often dismissed as being less serious than other chronic conditions in terms of impact on quality of life and societal costs," Philip Van Kerrebroeck, professor of urology at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, said.
"These data show that nocturia negatively affects both sleep and daytime performance and its impact on work productivity is in line with many other chronic conditions. Patients with nocturia should seek specific treatment for this debilitating condition," Kerrebroeck said.
The researchers also asked 786 patients in two controlled trials what bothers them most about nocturia.
More than half (57 per cent) of male sufferers and 42 per cent of women said that the most difficult part was disturbance to their sleep pattern, followed by the insomnia which follows and the way it makes them feel the next morning.
For older patients the condition brought with it other fears, including that of falling as they are forced to go to the bathroom in the dark.
The condition is often trivialised and assumed to be an inevitable part of the ageing process, but the latest research adds to evidence that it is a serious illness with far reaching implications.
