Deterioration of pelvic floor muscle function and prolonged urethral dysfunction in a rat model of simulated birth trauma
Yui Abe-Takahashi, Takeya Kitta, Mifuka Ouchi, Hiroki Chiba, Madoka Higuchi, Mio Togo, Naohisa Kusakabe, Hidehiro Kakizaki, Nobuo Shinohara, Takashige Abe · 2026
Read Deterioration of pelvic floor muscle function and prolonged urethral dysfunction in a rat model of simulated birth trauma by Yui Abe-Takahashi, Takeya Kitta, Mifuka Ouchi, Hiroki Chiba, Madoka Higuchi, Mio Togo, Naohisa Kusakabe, Hidehiro Kakizaki, Nobuo Shinohara, Takashige Abe (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13561696.txt.
Description
Yui Abe-Takahashi and nine co-authors followed the long-term damage that simulated childbirth does to rats' pelvic floors, in this 2026 study. Vaginal delivery is a leading risk factor for stress urinary incontinence, the leaking that follows coughs and effort. Earlier work in rats mapped the injury over weeks. What happens over months, as the body repairs or fails to, was unclear.
Eighteen female rats were split into a sham group and groups examined four and twelve weeks after vaginal distension, the model's stand-in for birth trauma. The team measured how strongly the urethra responded to electrical stimulation and weighed and typed the pelvic floor muscles fiber by fiber. Response was already weaker at four weeks. The longer view shows whether muscle composition keeps shifting toward weaker fiber types, which would explain why some mothers' symptoms persist or grow with time.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yui Abe-Takahashi, Takeya Kitta, Mifuka Ouchi, Hiroki Chiba, Madoka Higuchi, Mio Togo, Naohisa Kusakabe, Hidehiro Kakizaki, Nobuo Shinohara, Takashige Abe |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 32 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |